Embedded Open Source Summit 2023

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 SpaceX Falcon9 which uses a redundant system based on several x86 Linux computers.  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 the distribution was delivered 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, tutorials, etc.)