Distributed Robotic Interoperability with NASA’s core Flight System

NASA’s core Flight System (cFS) is Goddard-developed software that provides the foundation for a flight software (FSW) system, used across 40+ missions in the NASA fleet. cFS provides a framework for native cFS apps to interoperate but does not currently provide for integration with other space-related domains such as Robotics and is optimized for use on a single processor. This project updates cFS to optionally use the Data Distribution Service (DDS) within the software bus message router as an alternative to the existing in-memory data transfer. DDS is an open-source middleware standard for message transfer over various transports, and is used by the Robotic Operating System (ROS) 2 framework for message exchange.

By utilizing DDS for message transport in cFS, missions will be able to publish and subscribe to messages on the software bus regardless of where each individual mission app is executing. This will enable a FSW implementation to run across various partitions, processors, or subsystems and function as a single entity. For example, a real-time command & data handling subsystem on one processor and a non-real-time processing application on another processor can work together as a single FSW system without redundant core services, reducing complexity and CPU utilization. Future work could expand this to communicate over predefined topics between various spacecraft networked together via something like a Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) network. As DDS is the open standard middleware also used by Robotic systems, this implementation will also unlock cross-domain interoperability into robotics, allowing native communication between FSW apps performing command & data handling (C&DH) and fault management functions and robotic applications performing robotic tasks. This will help enable new cohesive software architectures for Lunar and Martian robotic missions, Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM) missions, and other robotic mission concepts.

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