What OS do Space Probes/Craft Use?

[wumpus]

On 2/6/2016 at 1:08 PM, Ravenchant said:

Yup, like the flight software on the ISS, quite a lot of satellites and probes (Rosetta and part of Cassini, for example) and several launch vehicles.

 

Fun fact about Ada and reusing old code, this is how the first Ariane 5 failed. Its inertial navigation system used the same code as the one on Ariane 4, the problem being that Ariane 5 had a different flight profile and its lateral velocity reached higher values than the program was designed for, causing a rollover when converting from 64 to 16-bit format. The guidance system shut down, the rocket attempted to do a rapid course correction and started breaking apart, so the self-destruct was triggered.

Yeah, that's why I suggested looking long and hard at why you want an OS in your system.  Any code *you* haven't debugged isn't debugged for your code.  If you can do the job more simply with less code (even if you have to debug a little more of your own code) it should be better.  Of course, for the things that want something like Linux, you better hope that you can reboot that computer *anytime* and not rely on it for real-time operation (I'd assume that the payload parts will be the things that need something as complex as Linux and be willing to deal with those issues, while the booster/navigation/landing systems need to be bulletproof).

[fredinno]

6 hours ago, stibbons said:

The mainline Linux kernel is not real-time, right. But geeks like it enough to attempt to make the kernel fully-preemptible and do real-time work with it. See the RT wiki.

As for the OP question, if you've read The Martian, the logs from Sojourner booting are pretty legit (although almost certainly not exact):

LOG: SOL 0
BOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED
TIME 00:00:00
LOSS OF POWER DETECTED, TIME/DATE UNRELIABLE
LOADING OS...

VXWARE OPERATING SYSTEM (C) WIND RIVER SYSTEMS
PERFORMING HARDWARE CHECK:

 

How would they be able to restart something as old as Sojourner? Even something like Beagle 2 would be easier.

9 hours ago, RizzoTheRat said:

Some are using Android.

Surrey Satellites' Strand-1 had a google Nexus mobile phone on board, the idea being they're cheap hardware with a lot of built in sensors and could be ideal for controlling small satellites.  http://www.sstl.co.uk/Missions/STRaND-1--Launched-2013/STRaND-1/STRaND-1--Smartphone-nanosatellite

NASA have a similar programme running called PhoneSat.

I don't think that will take off- you really kind of want space-rated equipment for going to space, otherwise, your sats definately won't last long.

[RizzoTheRat]

They're not intended to last long, I think the idea is cheap disposable satellites for fairly short missions