Design of the Flight Software Maintenance in Orbit

Paper number

IAC-08.D1.4.9

Author

Mrs. Lianfang Fu, China Academy of Space Technology, China

Year

2008

Abstract

Modifying the flight software when a satellite running in orbit is ever the dream of yesterday, but now it is possible today. It is very important and necessary to have a way to modify the complete or part of the flight software during the spacecraft working in orbit. It can help us to add new software functions, to correct software errors, or even to rescue a spacecraft. 
This paper describes four kinds of methods to maintain the flight software; these methods are variables modification, modules replacing, tasks replacing and the complete software replacing. This paper did the analysis and comparison of those methods, and figured out the advantages and disadvantages of each method. Variables modification is the easiest way to implement, but it’s not flexible enough. The modules replacing needs the application software to do some special configurations. In order to realize tasks replacing, the operating system software or the application software needs to reserve the interface. And if you want to do the complete software replacing, the support of hardware system is necessary. This paper will show you how to realize the flight software maintenance in the point of designers’ and users’ view. Except the above mentioned methods, whether there is another better way to fulfill the flight software maintenance need to be discussed during this meeting.
All the methods described in this paper have been used successfully for the communications satellites, remote sensing satellites and deep space exploration satellites. The author is an experienced software engineer working in China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), all the data and diagrams used in this paper are original and from practice. This paper has not been published in any other materials, and no presented in any conferences before.

Abstract document

IAC-08.D1.4.9.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-08.D1.4.9.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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