Open source technology and The Final Frontier – Space exploration
For the past 15 years, NASA has regularly used open-source software in its R&D projects. It has used open source to address numerous project and mission needs, with a goal of accelerating software development, amplifying awareness, and showcasing the impact of NASA’s ground-breaking research and exploration programs.
Open source has played an important role in many NASA projects—and most recently in its Mars exploration initiatives, including:
- The Curiosity Rover, deployed to help NASA explore the climate of the Mars Gale Crater, in 2012. The development team used exclusively open-source softwareincluding Blender and GIMP for creating Curiosity’s 3D content. After what was initially supposed to be a 2-year mission, the Curiosity’s mission was extended, and it continues its work today.
- The Ingenuity Helicopter, nicknamed “Ginny,” is a drone designed and built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the exploration of Mars. Ingenuity runs an embedded Linux distribution on its navigation computer, with much of its written in C++ using JPL’s open source flight control framework, F Prime. Launched in 2021 with the Perseverance Rover, Ginny is still at work as of this writing, having completed more than 20 aerial scouting missions.
According to a JPL spokesperson, NASA undertakes open source projects for its space exploration initiatives because the resulting code is more robust and streamlined and is adaptable and extendable by design. In fact, NASA is so committed to the concept of open source that it now maintains a public repository of open source software code on the web, with the aim of fueling innovation within other organizations and groups.
How open source is used in space exploration
Open source software has played a significant role in the democratization of space development exploration. By providing a “tried-and-tested” software foundation as a launchpad, open source enables software engineers to significantly reduce development cycles and benefit from the expert knowledge of the open source community.
Outside of NASA, many other organizations are using open source for innovation, developing a variety of advanced software solutions that support education, data analysis, and space exploration:
Satellites Founded by a team of former NASA scientists, San Francisco-based Planet Labs uses open-source code to build a network of earth-observation satellites that provide new images of Earth’s landmass every day.
With locations in the US, the EU, and Singapore, Spire Global had developed a network of nanosatellites that deliver data on natural disasters and weather, and also inform global logistics systems.
Operating Systems: Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin has partnered with NASA and the Open Source Robotics Foundation to develop the Space ROS verification and validation system for aerospace software.
Rocket Development: The Libre Space Foundation contributes open-source hardware and software to a number of projects, including the hyrid-fueled Cronos rocket engineered by White Noise, and for telemetry systems for high-power rockets.
The future of open source in space
Open source brings numerous advantages to space exploration by design, including increased software quality, reduced development costs, and faster development cycles. It also provides a more level playing field, reducing existing barriers to collaboration between public companies and private agencies, opening the doors to new and better ways to innovate.
