Flight Software
Flight software may be the least appreciated challenge of spacecraft development. It’s easy to see and love the incredible structures and rocket engines and not appreciate that the majority of what makes those things work is the software that controls it precisely, communicates with controllers, and manages fault tolerance and fallback plans.
It’s also hard to find good resources, so most of our time at Space Steps is focused on helping you understand frameworks, get hands on experience with labs, and connect with the community.
The Flight Software Dictionary
A collection of acronyms and terms used frequently in the flight software world.
The Space Steps GitHub Repository
Find Basecamp, apps, and additional support materials.
The Space Steps YouTube Channel
Our channel includes YouTube videos covering flight software topics
Three Ways to Grow as a Flight Software Developer
Read our Intro Articles
These three articles cover the things we think most learners can benefit from.
Get to Know the Terminology
The flight software world is filled with special terms. Our dictionary aims to help you decipher the difference between “Ack” and “Ack!”
The Flight Software Dictionary: The Flight Software Dictionary
Learn cFS with Basecamp
Basecamp is our free programs that wraps NASA’s cFS flight software architecture in Python and provides tools, apps, and built-in tutorials to get you developing with the same code set flying all over the solar system.
Our GitHub repository is here:
Articles
This is a collection of all of our Flight Software articles, ordered by oldest to newest.
-
Spacecraft Software Basics
Spacecraft are a lot like robots on Earth. They both have things that move, they have sensors such as cameras, and they’ve got to operate…
-
Core Flight Software Basics
If you need to write software to run your spacecraft, instruments, and maybe even ground systems and aerial drones, you might consider adopting NASA’s Core…
-
Operating System Basics
Spacecraft that use operating systems tend to use real-time (or close enough to real-time) operating systems. Traditionally, this has been because every clock cycle and…
-
What is cFS?
It’s worth pointing out that it’s not just space missions using cFS. Drones and underwater vehicles are using it. And people are looking at it…
-
Why use cFS?
The Core Flight Software ecosystem is high-quality, certified by NASA, and freely available. It would take teams of programmers years to develop the same capability…
-
Why not use cFS?
The Core Flight System can save your team many (many) months of work. And it’s a flexible framework that lets you use it on many…
-
cFE Executive Services
Every system (including our brains) has some core component within them that keeps the lights on. It keeps the heart pumping, watches to make sure…
-
cFE Software Bus
Vehicles have all sorts of data zipping around. Your sensors are collecting information, your functions want information, you want to send information… managing the chaos…
-
cFE Time Services
People who have launched and operated spacecraft all agree: Getting the time correct is incredibly difficult. It’s so difficult and tricky to keep everything on…
-
cFE Event Service
The Event Services module lets you send, filter, and log event messages. These are time-stamped messages that can be given labels such as Debug, Informational,…
-
cFE Table Service
Tables are great at organizing information in easy-to-understand ways. If your temperature function needs to know what the maximum temperature limit is, it can look…
-
cFS App Layer
If you spend weeks and months creating a robust guidance, navigation, and control algorithm for reaction wheels, wouldn’t you like to use that on a…
-
cFS App: Scheduler Lab
Would you like something to happen every day precisely at 2:03 in the morning? Would you like a series of things to happen, one right…
-
cFS App: Command Ingest Lab
When your system is out flying or swimming around, you’ll probably use some sort of radio to talk with it. But when your system is…
-
cFS App: Telemetry Output Lab
Getting data out of your system when it’s in the lab can be surprisingly complex sometimes. NASA has solved a big part of the problem…
-
Starting a Flight Software Project
Take any veteran software developer to lunch and they’ll tell you story after story of the things they wish they’d known when they started. And…
-
Electronic Data Sheets
Electronic Data Sheets are a way to create and document your software interfaces. You can use them for any software project to make it much…
-
cFS Basecamp Basics
Communications is between anything and everything: the spacecraft and the ground, the spacecraft and other spacecraft, and ground stations to operation centers. Even simple satellites…
-
cFS Basecamp JSON
Communications is between anything and everything: the spacecraft and the ground, the spacecraft and other spacecraft, and ground stations to operation centers. Even simple satellites…
-
cFS Basecamp App Design
Communications is between anything and everything: the spacecraft and the ground, the spacecraft and other spacecraft, and ground stations to operation centers. Even simple satellites…