SpaceX modifies Linux to support the company's own hardware. SpaceX's historic Demo-2 delivers NASA astronauts to ISS.SpaceX Crew Dragon simulator lets you dock with the ISS, and it's not easy.SpaceX nearing 500 Starlink satellites now in orbit.
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SpaceX maintains its own Linux variant, said Josh Sulkin, leader of software design for SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule, but it's a close cousin to the version running inside every Android phone. The Chromium-based interface connects to vehicle control software written in the C++ language and running on the open-source Linux operating system. Touchscreens exemplify SpaceX's modernized computing approach, but the Dragon capsule also has more traditional hardware buttons for critical actions like responding to a cabin fire, said Wendy Shimata, who manages the Dragon software team. That's a departure from traditional aerospace programming methods using lower-level languages. That means a web app written in HTML and JavaScript, just like millions of websites, is showing the astronauts what they need to see, and interpreting their taps and swipes. "We liked all the modern features that comes with browsers out of the box," Hnaide said during the AMA, adding that Chromium gave SpaceX access to lots of programmers already skilled with the technology. SpaceX began the effort to demonstrate its design ideas to NASA, but SpaceX stuck with it. SpaceX uses Chromium, Google's open-source foundation for the Chrome web browser, for the touchscreen user interface on the Crew Dragon, said Sofian Hnaide, a developer who worked on the Crew Dragon display technology used in the Demo-2 launch that carried the two astronauts to the space station. For example, software runs the SpaceX emergency abort sequence that lofts the Crew Dragon capsule away in the event a Falcon rocket explodes. But it's every bit as important, because it controls all aspects of space flight. Software is less visible than some of the company's imagination-grabbing hardware, like booster rockets that return to Earth and land themselves. In a Reddit AMA that took place as Hurley and Behnken help out on the space station, SpaceX programmers revealed how Elon Musk's company has worked to modernize its part of the space industry, a field that still relies on technology dating back decades.