Is Unix/Linux used in space exploration? Post: 302538601

Sponsored Content

The Lounge What is on Your Mind? Is Unix/Linux used in space exploration? Post 302538601 by Perderabo on Wednesday 13th of July 2011 01:07:14 PM

07-13-2011

Administrator Emeritus

This is how I make my living these days. We are using Solaris but are migrating to Linux as fast as we can. We build launch vehicles and satellites. Sometimes we launch our own satellites. Sometimes we launch someone else's satellite in our launch vehicle. Sometimes our satellite rides up in someone else's launch vehicle.

For launch vehicles we use Solaris/Linux for Launch Support Equipment. LSE talks to the vehicle while it is on the ground. If a spacecraft goes up on our launch vehicles, we control the vehicle entirely with Solaris/Linux. If we built the spacecraft, we take over as soon as it is in orbit and perform the in-orbit testing. Often we drive until the craft is in the final orbit. Usually we turn the craft over to the customer. In a very few cases we drive forever. Our rooms like the mission control centers you see at NASA are 100% Linux/Unix. We talk to ground antennas via TCP/IP. We own one antenna and rent time on others. Our antenna is not Unix or Linux... don't know about the others. No Linux or Unix on board any of our spacecraft.

Most of what we do are GEO communication satellites. We do launch a few LEO science satellites for NASA and these could be called space exploration. We have one craft beyond Mars on its way to the asteroid belt. That certainly counts.

We use a mixture of Linux Solaris and Windows in the design of spacecraft. Our compute cluster for fluid dynamics computation is 100% Linux.

These 2 Users Gave Thanks to Perderabo For This Post:

Perderabo

View Public Profile for Perderabo

Find all posts by Perderabo

4 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Linux space problem

I am very new to Linux and trying to install Oracle 9.2 on Red Hat Linux 7.2. My problem: /tmp needs to be larger in order to install Oracle. It is 64MB now. How can I resize this? I'm totally confused !! Thanks.

2. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

upper limit of accessible memory space for a single process in Unix/Linux

Hellp all, if there is 3G memory in my Unix server I want to know if all the 3G space can be used by ong sigle process. As i know, in Windows, one process can only access at most 1G memory despite there is probably more than 1G memory is equipped.

3. Red Hat

about shared memory space in Linux !

Dear Friends , I am confused about shared memory in Linux . plz look @ the below output : $ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 126G 61G 59G 52% / tmpfs 1.7G 0 1.7G 0% /dev/shm Here , I see that every time...

4. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

How much take space Linux operating system?

Hi Guys, I have a PC (laptop), where ram is 1 GB, hard disk is 400 GB, Now in my PC has window7 & oracle 10g, suppose if we now installed linux then will my system work or we should remove window7 now, please let me know that which linux version is take less space in PC.

LEARN ABOUT SUSE

ivman-launch

IVMAN-LAUNCH(8) 					      System Manager's Manual						   IVMAN-LAUNCH(8)

NAME

       ivman-launch - launch script for Ivman

SYNOPSIS

       ivman-launch [ --exit-with-session <cmd> ] [ OPTIONS ] [ COMMAND [ ARGS... ]]

DESCRIPTION

       ivman-launch  is a simple script used to launch Ivman.  Its sole purpose is to ensure Ivman is closed at the end of a user's login session.
       You can use it if your session manager does not properly close Ivman when you log out.

       ivman-launch supports the same command-line options as Ivman, and one additional option: --exit-with-session.   Thus,  there  is  no  point
       using ivman-launch if you do not need to use this option.

       If  you supply a COMMAND (with optional ARGS), the the specified command will be run after ivman is started, and ivman will be killed after
       that command exits.

OPTIONS

       --exit-with-session <cmd>
	      ivman-launch will block until the command 'cmd' terminates, at which point it will kill Ivman and exit itself.  If the command 'cmd'
	      is  not  running when ivman-launch is started, Ivman will exit immediately.  Note that this option implies Ivman will be called with
	      the '--nofork' option.  option.

       --debug --nofork --system
	      These flags be passed to the launched ivman command.

EXAMPLES

       ivman-launch --exit-with-session xinit &
	      The ivman process will be started, then the xinit process is watched.  When the xinit process exits, ivman is killed.  Placing  this
	      command  in  an  ~/.xinitrc  file would cause Ivman to launch in the background when your session begins, and exit when your session
	      ends:

       ivman-launch /usr/bin/x-window-manager
	      The ivman process is launched, then /usr/bin/x-window-manager is run, when x-window-manager exits, ivman	is  killed.   This  is	an
	      example of how ivman might be launched from Xsession in order to chain several programs together in one session.

SEE ALSO

       ivman(8) Xsession(5)

CREDITS

       This script was written by Daniele Favara.

								 10 February 2006						   IVMAN-LAUNCH(8)