Languages used to write programs for satellite-missions?

programming-languages satellite
trinity picture trinity · Feb 22, 2010 · Viewed 24.8k times · Source

Just out of interest , we know there's a lot of programming involved in the making of a satellite . Which languages are they written in ?

Answer

Jim Lewis picture Jim Lewis · Feb 22, 2010

The NASA satellite missions I've been involved with all used assembly language for the onboard software. There is a strong preference at NASA to use flight software with heritage -- reusing components (both hardware and software) with a proven successful history on previous missions. So rather than using compiled code on the latest, most powerful processors, we often end up using hand-coded assembly on wimpy, but tried-and-true, processors. For example, the THEMIS project, built in 2003 and launched in 2007, runs on Intel 8085 processors, with hand-coded assembly modules with heritage from previous missions like WIND, CLUSTER, and STEREO.

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