[LEE3] Using Linux as an embedded OS for the space industry Pierre Ficheux, Smile

Most of the time, the space industry uses dedicated OS (such as RTEMS, LithOS or PikeOS) for which a qualification process following ECSS rules has been performed or even “bare metal” software for the missions. Nevertheless, Linux has been used for some missions such as the Flight Linux Project (1999), the Quake Sat (2003) or more recently the SpaceX Falcon9 which uses a redundant system based on several Linux computers. Additionally, recent space missions use “standard” COTS hardware such as x86 (SpaceX) or ARM instead of specific CPUs (such as LEON). Though there is Linux support for LEON, the Linux community is much more involved in supporting standard hardware targets.

In 2020, the CNES and some major European players of the space industry started a study in order to define and build a Linux distribution that would meet a wide range of needs encountered in space missions (spacecrafts and payloads). The first version of this Yocto distribution should be made available in june 2022 and the evolution is expected to be handled by an open source community sharing experiment, software components, documentation or tutorials.

During the conference we will start with a state of the art of the use of Linux in space missions, then we will focus on the main steps studied during the project.

Taking in account the needs of the space industry

security, safety and certification
footprint
space standards support such as SpaceWire
partitioning (using an hypervisor)
Setting up and managing the community

source repository
binary images for standard targets
documentation and tutorials
sharing experiments with competitors
involvement
Setting up a beta versions of the distribution for reference targets (Zynq)

Pierre Ficheux, Chief Technical Officer @Smile

Follow Live Embedded Event on :
Twitter :   / liveembedded  
LinkedIn :   / live-embedded-078abb1b9