Roadmap to Collaborative, Modular, Self-Healing, Uploadable Software

Paper number

IAC-08.D1.I.6

Author

Mr. George Cancro, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, United States

Year

2008

Abstract

As hardware becomes more and more of a commodity in space systems, software becomes more of a significant cost and schedule driver.  In order to drive software costs down or speed up software schedules to operationally responsive timescales, new software concepts and techniques must be established.  Beginning with the requirements of our NASA and National Security Space customers, APL has defined a set of software principles to meet cost and speed requirements and to guide new concept development.  The principles include: Limited test collaboration, Development and run-time modularity, Task-level fault protection/self-healing, and post-launch uploadability.   

	'Limited test collaboration' defines an ability for multiple organizations to collaborate on a project such that each organizations' software is developed and tested in isolation from each other with only integration being performed at the project-level.   'Development and run-time modularity' defines a principle that software is developed and stored for re-use at the functional level rather than an overall application level and then executed in run time as a modular unit of memory and processor time.  'Task-level fault protection and self healing' defines an ability to restart individual tasks or functions, in the event of a task exception or fault occurs, without affecting the other tasks or rebooting the processor.  'Post-launch uploadability' defines the ability to load up functions post-launch without having to patch existing applications, reload the entire software application, or reboot the processor.      

  	  This paper will describe in detail the principles of Collaboration, Modularity, Self-Healing, and Post-launch uploadability, that we believe will form the cornerstones of advanced flight software, as well as the benefits that will be achieved from using these principles on future space missions.  The paper will go on to discuss a roadmap to reach these principles, including specific development milestones to be achieved along the way.   In addition, this paper will highlight on-going APL efforts under contracts from NRL and NASA that are beginning to achieve these milestones and make progress toward the principles we have defined. 

  	  The interactive session will be used to solicit feedback on our principles, the roadmap, the development milestones, and the progress so far.  Our hope is that this interaction will sharpen our concepts and also evangelize other organizations around the world to work toward these important principles.

Abstract document

IAC-08.D1.I.6.pdf

Manuscript document

(absent)