SpaceX Falcon 9 used Linux OS to Launch Astronauts to the International Space Station
Amulya Raj Budhathoki
Interesting thing about Falcon 9 was it uses linux system. As many mission critical and real time technologies uses Linux . As reported, there-were 35 core developers who coded the falcon 9 and the simulation software. The Falcon 9 onboard processor consists of 3 dual-core x86 processors and the flight software is completely coded on C/C++. Space X is also the first private space agency to use open-source software in the space.
Interesting thing about Falcon 9 was it uses linux system. As many mission critical and real time technologies uses Linux . As reported, there-were 35 core developers who coded the falcon 9 and the simulation software. The Falcon 9 onboard processor consists of 3 dual-core x86 processors and the flight software is completely coded on C/C++. Space X is also the first private space agency to use open-source software in the space.
3 processor cores are used because SpaceX uses an Actor-Judge system which provides redundancy. Every time a decision is made, it is compared with the results from the other cores. If there’s any disagreement, the decision is void and the process is restarted. If every processor core comes up with the same result than only the decision is sent to the PowerPC microcontrollers.
The Falcon 9 Dragon spacecraft runs on Linux with flight software written in C and C++. The touchscreen interface is processed using Chromium and JavaScript. and the astronauts have physical buttons to control the spacecraft.
