Space Steps

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.