NASA and Software Integration
November 6, 2020
I spotted “NASA’s New Rocket Would Be the Most Powerful Ever. But It’s the Software That Has Some Officials Worried.” The issue is successful integration. Here are the companies building the principal propulsion systems:
- Aerojet Rocketdyne (the Super Strypi launch vehicle)
- Boeing (yep, the 737 Max outfit)
- Lockheed Martin (the F-35 outfit)
- Northrop Grumman (the Zuma payload detacher issue)
- United Launch Alliance (a joint venture of The Boeing Company and Lockheed Martin Corporation).
The write up raises the question, “Will the software developed by the companies work in a smoothly, integrated, coordinated way?”
The answer should be, “Yes. Absolutely.”
The answer is, “Each subsystem works within its test environment.”
The article contains these statements:
All of those components need to work together for a mission to be successful. But NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) recently said it was concerned about the disjointed way the complicated system was being developed and tested. At an ASAP meeting last month, Paul Hill, a member of the panel and a former flight and mission operations director at the agency, said the “panel has great concern about the end-to-end integrated test capability and plans, especially for flight software.” Instead of one comprehensive avionics and software test to mimic flight, he said, there is “instead multiple and separate labs; emulators and simulations are being used to test subsets of the software.”
The proof of successful integration and coordinate will arrive at lift off it seems.
A Boeing vice president John Shannon is quoted in the article:
Shannon said the systems have been “completed, tested in integration facilities at [NASA’s] Marshall Space Flight Center. We’ve had independent verification and validation on it to show that it works well with the flight software and the stand controller software. And it’s all all ready to go.”
Okay.
Stephen E Arnold, November 6, 2020
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