This content originally appeared on Level Up Coding - Medium and was authored by Konadu Akwasi Akuoko (CodedKaa)
You can get the software framework that’s flying on the Mars helicopter, and use it on your project. How open-source is pushing humanity beyond imagination.
After a seven-month journey, Perseverance started its high speed descend towards the red planet on February 18th, 2021. Onboard the Perseverance was a little helicopter called Ingenuity. It will be the first unmanned helicopter on another planet. Its sole purpose is to do a series of flight tests on Mars.
The helicopter weighs 1.8kilograms but the atmosphere of Mars is about a hundredth the density of the earth’s atmosphere at ground level, and its gravity has only a third of our earth’s gravity. Ingenuity must overcome all these challenges not to mention the power and communication limitations.
According to Tim Canham on IEEE Spectrum, the Ingenuity helicopter uses Linux as its main operating, combined with F`(pronounced F prime) which was made into an open-source project by Nasa. Onboard is a Snapdragon 801 CPU which was used in the first Oneplus phone a very old chip indeed, but that chip is way faster than the chip on board the Perseverance.
Why did NASA choose to use Linux as the operating system for the Helicopter?
According to Canham, VxWorks the operating system for the Perseverance rover and many other space gadgets does not support the Snapdragon 801, and hence they were left with no option but to try and use Linux and their framework F`.
What is so special about Linux being used as the operating system?
Canham said: “This the first time we’ll be flying Linux on Mars. We’re running on a Linux operating system. The software framework that we’re using is one that we developed at JPL for CubeSats and instruments, and we open-sourced it a few years ago. So, you can get the software framework that’s flying on the Mars helicopter, and use it on your project. It’s kind of an open-source victory because we’re flying an open-source operating system and an open-source flight software framework and flying commercial parts that you can buy off the shelf if you wanted to do this yourself someday. This is a new thing for JPL because they tend to like what’s very safe and proven, but a lot of people are very excited about it, and we’re looking forward to doing it.”
It is a big win for open-source projects, and even you and I can build one for ourselves. But the main reason Linux was used was not for us to tinker with things, but the powerfulness of the Linux operating system. Why are we saying so? Inside Ingenuity is a flight-controlled program, that is a guidance loop that controls the vehicle running at a speed of 500hz. A program that also runs at 30hz is also capturing images, analyzing them, and tracking them from frame to frame. This process can take a huge amount of resources out of a seven-year-old Soc, this calls for the use of a very lightweight but robust and reliable OS. And many will agree with me that Linux is way faster than most operating systems out there.
This opens new doors of opportunities for many people including me, it means that we can also improve upon the Ingenuity helicopter because as Canham said all parts of the helicopter are from off the shelves of stores, and its software is also open-source, thus we can also contribute to its development.
The future of open source?
I see open source as the safest, fastest, and most cost-effective way of advancing technology. It is safe to say NASA embraced open source early going as far back as the 1960s. IBM, Amazon Web Services, Google’s Kubernetes and TensorFlow, and even Microsoft with its Azure functions are all-embracing open-source and it is a sure way to grow as humans.
Open source have come a long way, and it is still growing today, I have decided that I will also join the race, I will help make open source better by contributing the little knowledge that I have about programming and game development in forums like GitHub. If you have any ideas please don’t hesitate to share them with me either in the comments or on Twitter, you can also join me on YouTube as we do some gamedev. If you enjoyed the article you can leave as many as 50 claps to help us create more content you love. I wish you all the best and until next time happy coding.
Open Source and Linux Makes It to Space, Pushing the Limits of Human Imagination. was originally published in Level Up Coding on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
This content originally appeared on Level Up Coding - Medium and was authored by Konadu Akwasi Akuoko (CodedKaa)
Konadu Akwasi Akuoko (CodedKaa) | Sciencx (2021-03-07T03:22:29+00:00) Open Source and Linux Makes It to Space, Pushing the Limits of Human Imagination.. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2021/03/07/open-source-and-linux-makes-it-to-space-pushing-the-limits-of-human-imagination/
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