Container Flight Software

The Container Flight Software project will explore the application of cloud computing technologies to the domain of spacecraft flight software. The primary focus is to investigate the feasibility of integrating multiple flight software subsystems into portable, protected, lightweight software partitions, otherwise known as containers. The myriad potential benefits mirror the cloud computing world, and include: rapid integration time, increased reliability, fault containment, and the ability to deploy multiple disparate software systems on high performance spacecraft flight computers and constellations.

By deploying a Container Flight Software Architecture, we have the potential to take advantage of the higher performance flight computers that are becoming available, while trying to reduce integration time and development costs of porting software to each new project. Compared to the evolution of flight software, the cloud computing architecture is years ahead, and it shows no signs of slowing down. By applying these cloud computing technologies to the domain of flight software we can potentially lower the software costs for cubesats while simultaneously planning to maximize the use of the resources of more advanced multi-core flight processors.

Specifically, a successful integration of software container technology will provide the following return on investment:

· Reduced integration and test time of core Flight System (cFS) flight software by having a standard “Drop in” cFS container.

· Significant reduction of development, integration, and test time of traditionally non-flight software such as General Mission Analysis Tool (GMAT), Blockchain/Distributed Ledger based systems, and Linux/Unix based science data processing applications. The significant reduction of development time comes from the use of the standard Linux/Container API versus porting a proven code base from Linux to a partitioned real time operating system.

· Increased reliability through the isolation of software subsystems. This can be most useful when integrating C&DH, ACS, and Science data processing software subsystems on one processor.

· The potential use of container orchestration tools such as Kubernetes or “Docker Swarm” for Distributed Spacecraft Missions or advanced multi-core flight applications.

The vison of Container Flight Software is to provide a set of “off the shelf” ready to use flight software container applications for future Linux based Cubesat, Spacecube, or advanced multi-core based missions.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 4) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.