NASA Tests Linux for Spacecraft Control

“Linux was selected for a NASA experiment aimed at proving the
feasibility of COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) hardware and
software for scientific space missions. A key requirement was for
application development and runtime environments familiar to
scientists, to facilitate porting applications from the lab to the
spacecraft.

“NASA’s ‘Dependable Multiprocessor’ (DM) experiment is among
four scientific payloads scheduled for launch in November of 2009,
in the ‘New Millennium Program Space Technology 8 (ST8) mission.
Honeywell Aerospace was chosen to be the lead contractor for the DM
experiment, while Orbital Sciences was selected to build ST8’s
‘Spacecraft bus…'”

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