FEATURE
Driving Down Mission Costs
New Flight Software Package Delivered to Lunar Mission
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), the Goddard-developed mission that will map the lunar surface and characterize future landing sites when it’s launched in 2008, is the first to fly a new software package that promises to significantly reduce flight software costs and development time in the future, its creators say.
| Goddard’s Flight Software Branch (Code 582) delivered the Core Flight Executive (cFE) to the LRO flight software team a few months ago. The delivery represents the first step in a much larger effort to provide an automated, platform-independent system that offers reusable software to all types of missions, said Maureen Bartholomew, Product Development Lead. “In the past, we always had the greatest intentions of reusing software from one mission to the next, but it always seemed that we ended up reinventing the wheel.”
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is the first mission to use the Goddard-developed Core Flight Executive, a new software package that promises to reduce flight software development costs in the future.
|
 |
The Core Flight System
The delivered product is the first element in an overarching effort to streamline the software development process and manage previously flown software that handles routine spacecraft tasks, such as telemetry, health and safety, stored commanding, to name just a few. Called the Core Flight Software (CFS), system, the still-evolving capability isolates platform-dependent interfaces, provides a reusable plug-and-play software component library controlled by Code 582, includes an integrated development environment, and features a graphical interface that allows missions planners to peruse a catalog and select the components they want for their mission. The cFE is the base on which the mission components sit.
The obvious benefit is that missions don’t have to dedicate valuable resources to developing commonly reused software, said Jonathan Wilmot, who leads the CFS program. Instead, they can use their resources to develop greater functionality onboard their spacecraft or keep down costs. Furthermore, development systems can be up and running in just a few weeks, not months as was the case before, he said. The hope is that the system will reduce time to flight, reduce the risks, and allow future missions to choose from an ever-expanding catalog of reusable components.
Layered Architecture
The effort began a couple years ago when a group of Goddard flight software engineers outlined components needed for all missions, regardless of mission size, and determined the requirements for a generic onboard executive system that would allow missions to truly reuse software components. The group demonstrated a prototype in 2004 and formal development began in 2005.
The cFE is the first out of the gate and is the cornerstone of the system. It offers generic onboard software services, including time management, event handling, table management, file management, and network services. Because its internal workings are carefully layered and use run-time interfaces, users enjoy a “plug and play” environment where they can swap or update software and hardware without shutting down the entire system. “This means you can start and stop an application or fix something in the software while the system is running,” Bartholomew said.
Although the goal is to eventually offer users a suite of software applications as part of the reuse library, Bartholomew said the project is continuing and that only the cFE is available now. Even so, projects can still enjoy the plug-and-play capability using their own flight software components. In fact, she said, flight software developed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter might one day find a home in the reuse library.
|
