Mission-Generic Flight Software Scheduler, 10-R8114

Principal Investigators
Allison R. Bertrand
Robert A. Klar

Inclusive Dates:  11/09/09 – 03/09/10

Background - SwRI has developed mission-specific flight software for many successful space missions where the flight software development was included in the contract. Many aerospace customers are downsizing, while also working to develop lower-cost and more reusable solutions. These customers are looking for more general designs (rather than mission-specific ones) to enable them to amortize development costs across multiple spacecraft.

Approach - Flight software that uses a real-time operating system or other executive is typically implemented as a collection of individual executable tasks. The manner in which these tasks are scheduled for execution, both individually and in relation to one another, the priorities of the tasks, whether tasks may be preempted by other tasks, and the role of interrupt service routines are typically customized for each mission. While SwRI and others have developed reusable flight components previously, the objective was to investigate whether it was possible to design a scheduler component that could be readily configured to meet the needs of a wide variety of missions and scheduling paradigms, without the need to modify the source code and logic.

Accomplishments - Potential designs for a mission-generic scheduler were evaluated. An approach to creating a generic scheduler was established and designed. The generic scheduler design was then implemented and was tested as part of an integrated customer demonstration.

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