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Space Science

RedHat eCOS Flies in Space 25

Posted by michael from the flies-in-space dept.
Brindafella writes "Brindafella reports that Redhat is flying in space as the OS for Canada's Smallest Satellite: The Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment (CanX-1)[300k PDF], one of the flock of 1kg pico-satellites launched on 1 July 03 by a Russian rocket. Redhat eCos stands for embedded Configurable operating system, an open source real-time operating system (eCos Home Page). See the eCos Programmer's Guide for the CubeSat Computer: Introduction, Hardware Model, Development Setup, and Loading the eCos. The CANX-1 site at the University of Toronto, Canada gives more details, such as: The satellite is a 10cm cube, with a mass less than one kilogram; The satellite will generate about two Watts of peak power using direct energy conversion; Main Computer Board - Atmel AT91R40807 based on ARM7TDMI Thumb Processor, 40 MHz, 1 MB SRAM, 32 MB Flash, 200 mW max, 98 x 96 x 8 mm."
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RedHat eCOS Flies in Space More

RedHat eCOS Flies in Space

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  • on the flash memory. I would think that flash memory would be a bad choice for information gathering/constant read/write cycles. Does anyone know how long flash will last? Although these probably are expendable.
    • I doubt a real time system uses any swap. In a real time system you usually spec out before hand what apps are going to run and what resource in what amount they need. So they would know exactly how much ram they need.
    • Lets just say they used good FLASH, and no swap (eCOS needs no swap).

      The FLASH is probably only for uploading new program code to run the instruments onboard - I doubt they're using it for realtime storage, since that'd best be done downstairs. Since typical FLASH systems can withstand 10,000 or so re-writes before things go bitty, and presumably these guys used good stuff, I'd say thats enough for a lot of program updates.

  • ... is that it is allowing students (albeit mainly postgraduates) to actually try out new satellite concepts on a space platform.

    This could have very positive effects for the overall cost of satellite technology - Mistakes are currently sooooo expensive! (Hopefully you can launch a little cluster of these fairly cheaply by piggybacking on other payloads).

    I wonder if they'll sell me one :)

    • That's exactly what NASA and DARPA were thinking last year.

      However, there's more to the package than meets the eye. In the Endeavor package, we launched a pair of picosats tethered together by 50' of kevlar embedded with gold to get the antenna cross section up.

      While picosats do get the cost down, development still isn't particularly inexpensive.
      • I accept that the development cost is still high - but the reuse of a common platform (for basic comms, power, navigation (if applicable) infrastructure) helps. I notice that ESA has built Mars Express on a standard "bus" that they hope can be reused for other interplanetary missions (e.g. to Venus).

        The consequence of increasing knowledge of space technology is that parts of it can maybe be a little more routine (though still scary/exciting when you think that your code - possibly bugs and all - is in spa

  • I can't wait for the news headline - "Satellite lost due to unresolved RPM dependencies . . ." ;>
  • But doesn't the picture on THIS [utias-sfl.net] page HERE [utias-sfl.net] look like a Borg cube?

    Kidding aside, this is definitely a project I'll be lurking for a long while.
  • WTF is direct enegery conversion? Conversion from what?

  • Why not Linux? (Score:1, Troll)

    by mnmn ( 145599 )

    On an ARM7 you can run Linux given a few more megabytes of space which couldnt be expensive or bulky. Considering the number of things you can do with Linux, its probably worth it.

    I'm really wondering if I can pay to launch a small satellite with a tiny laser pointer that can point on various ground locations, and have it point close to me, and watch the spot on the ground at night.

    • Re:Why not Linux? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Next Slashdot article: First KDE compile done in space!
  • It would be cool if they sold some of these boards for the rest of us to play with, so we can say we "hack satellite control systems" :)

    The price on these Atmel cpu's at Digi-key is pretty good ~$30, but they seem to be obsolete. I'd put a board together myself, but it's well beyond my current electronics skills.

    Speaking of Atmel, if anyone is interested in getting started on playing with embedded systems for cheap, they sell a nice line of 8 bit RISC (don't laugh, I'm serious) microcontrollers called AV
  • ...there's no mention of a RAID array. I guess they're still gathering [slashdot.org]
    research for that.
  • I was involved in a DARPA picosat effort last year; I can actually say my code launched off Endeavor back on December 12th. Our picosats also used the ARM as the "main host" on the stack, had 8MB of flash, used a Rockwell/Conexant digital cordless telephone chip for the radio boards. I seem to recall we used vxWorks for our main host. I wrote the Conexant-related comms code.

    At the time, the company I work for "unexpectedly" inherited the picosat project from another NASA and DARPA contractor. Embedded Linu
  • I forgot to include this in my earlier posting: STS-113 pre-flight and picosat launch photos [ucla.edu]

    Enjoy!
  • Att; Message incoming from Mubin rav...

    Sloc unidentified Canadian satellite, response code emergency.

    Sloc to Mubin rav message recieve proceeding with analysis of device....

    Mubin rav; Proceed.

    Sloc to Mubin rav;...Unable to communicate with human coded control device! Device is using unfamiliar uncrackable interface.

    Mubin rav; destroy unfamiliar possibly hostile device.

    Sloc to Mubin rav; device destroyed, reporting unusual occurance to Earth based co-ordination centre http://www.nasa.gov/ for a

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