Rosetta prepares for date in space

The European Space Agency (ESA) will launch its Rosetta spacecraft this month, supported by a major software management and control project.

The mission's objective is to become the first craft to land on a comet, providing scientists with a better understanding of how the Earth came into being.

Rosetta's ground control systems will communicate with onboard IT that delivers instructions to the craft and sends data and information back to scientists.

But the on-board software will not be fully put to the test for 10 years - when Rosetta launches its Philae lander to investigate the comet.

Paolo Ferri, ESA spacecraft operations manager, says this means the systems have to be resilient to change and the hardware will have to cope for years into the future.

'One real headache is the fact that we know for sure that hardware will become obsolete as will operating systems,' he said.

'The development of applications has to take this into account and has to be developed with a very close eye towards independency from hardware platforms and operating systems.'

The software that controls Rosetta from the ground and in space has been developed by UK specialist software firm SciSys.

Ferri says there are many software modules involved in the Eur1bn (£678m) mission, and as technology develops the ESA and SciSys will update the onboard systems from mission control.

'Any module that we are sure we do not need now, we do it after launch,' he said.

The ground team is already preparing to upgrade systems from Solaris 2.6 to Solaris 8.0 after the mission has launched.

Most of the software for Rosetta is also used on the Mars Express mission, currently orbiting the red planet. And the core software will be used when the ESA launches a future mission to Venus.

Ferri says the re-use of software will generate significant savings.

'What we are trying to do at ESA to save costs is develop a common kernel that can be used by various missions,' he said.