Papermoon: A Space-grade Linux For The Newspace Era

TOKYO — When I worked for NASA successful nan 1980s, each outer and spaceship that went into orbit ran one-off, hand-coded, semi-proprietary programs. This attack was painful, expensive, and sometimes disastrous, arsenic pinch nan nonaccomplishment of nan Mars Climate Orbiter successful 1999 owed to a package blunder.

Things person changed. In his “Space Grade Linux” keynote astatine nan Open Source Summit Japan conference, Ramón Roche, a longtime robotics developer and wide head of nan Dronecode Foundation, told really Linux and open root software are becoming nan default for each motorboat — replacing nan bespoke, one-off programs of nan past.

This alteration has been coming for a while. By 2013, nan International Space Station (ISS) switched retired its Windows laptops for Debian Linux machines for mission-critical work. Today, SpaceX’s workhorse rocket, Falcon 9, and its Dragon spacecraft some tally Linux. Roche besides noted that nan first craft connected different planet, nan Ingenuity chopper connected Mars, flew pinch Linux. Heck, a developer precocious managed to tally unfastened root Doomon, a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite.

But Roche stressed that 1 point has been lacking. A communal abstraction Linux level truthful that abstraction companies tin extremity “competing connected nan plumbing” and commencement sharing halfway package infrastructure.

The NewSpace Challenge: Cheaper Launches, More Complex Software

The economical backdrop is simply a classical space‑tech storyline: It’s cheaper than ever to entree orbit, but package complexity and information requirements support rising.

“You tin motorboat a outer for nan costs of a bully car,” Roche said, noting that nan costs per kilogram is “quickly approaching little than $100 per kilo to vessel payload to space,” which successful move fuels a flywheel of much launches, much applications and moreover “data centers successful space.”

What doesn’t scale, he argued, is nan measurement galore missions are still engineered arsenic bespoke, one‑off package stacks. “It’s 2025 correct now, and we’re still successful a shape for illustration 1969,” wherever missions are one‑off and expensive. That exemplary “was good backmost erstwhile launches costs millions of dollars, he noted, “but nary longer fits nan economics of NewSpace.

Why Open Source Is nan Future for Space Missions

Space’s harsh realities — radiation‑induced “single group events” that reboot systems without warning, connection delays “measured successful minutes,” and nan impossibility of “SSH there” to hole a surgery outer — are pushing developers toward robust, well-understood, community‑maintained unfastened root alternatively of proprietary stacks.

The problem, arsenic Roche sees it, is not whether Linux is nan correct guidelines furniture for autonomous systems, but really it is used.

A study of practitioners identified Yocto arsenic nan “clear winner” among embedded Linux distributions. However, we still person a fragmented scenery of teams “building their ain type of Linux from scratch” pinch “no shared foundational layer,” Roche said.

“Everyone agrees that Linux is nan answer,” he said. “But cipher agrees connected which Linux.”

Learning From nan Drone Industry’s Open Source Success

That fragmentation looks acquainted to Roche, who has spent much than a decade successful nan drone ecosystem astir PX4 and related projects.

“I was location successful 2010 erstwhile nan drone manufacture looked very similar. Everyone was building connected their ain stacks, cipher talking to anyone else,” he recalled, describing “years of analyzable effort” and “every institution reinventing nan wheel, incompatible protocols” earlier nan organization decided to “stop competing connected nan plumbing and commencement competing connected innovation.”

In his telling, that displacement enabled unfastened root to powerfulness “the mostly of commercialized and master drones worldwide,” from agriculture and inspection to mapping, search‑and‑rescue, and moreover defense.

Introducing Papermoon: A Proposed Space-Grade Linux Stack

The reply is Papermoon, a projected space‑grade Linux stack. Roche described it arsenic “an unfastened root task and a caller foundation” built astir Linux arsenic nan “autoplay, mediate furniture architecture,” licensed nether MIT, pinch a Developer Certificate of Origin alternatively than publication agreements “friction.”

The extremity is simply a layered stack:

• Mission-specific user‑space frameworks astatine nan top.
• A managed board‑support and chair infrastructure furniture successful nan middle.
• Yocto/OpenEmbedded arsenic nan build strategy underneath, providing reproducible images, long‑term attraction and cross‑compilation.

On nan hardware side, early targets see RISC‑V improvement boards “like a Raspberry Pi, aforesaid value point,” Roche said, alongside space‑designed platforms specified arsenic Microchip’s radiation‑tolerant MPSoC, pinch continuous integration already moving “on each commit” and images booting connected existent boards.

“This is what you’re getting,” Roche told nan audience, arguing that teams who adopt Papermoon are “not starting from zero”— nan guidelines layer, build system, and “safety‑aware configuration” correspond “months that you don’t request to walk reinventing if you collaborate pinch us.”

Building a Safety-Critical System With nan ELISA Initiative

To tackle information and certification head-on, nan task has been incubating wrong nan Linux Foundation’s Enabling Linux successful Safety Applications (ELISA) initiative.  Roche highlighted ELISA vice president Kate Stewart’s activity arsenic emblematic of nan organization Papermoon wants to align with.

“If you’re building safety‑critical systems that tally connected Linux, there’s nary 1 amended to study from,” he said. “ELISA has been moving connected this problem since 2019: How do you usage Linux successful systems wherever nonaccomplishment intends nonaccomplishment of life?”

A twelvemonth ago, astir 30 group met successful personification astatine NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) — my location guidelines erstwhile I worked for NASA — pinch different 40 joining virtually from much than 20 organizations, agencies, and investigation groups, to “decide nan guidance for this project,” which Roche framed arsenic “not a maintenance‑only conversation, that’s actual, existent commitment.”

The Future Roadmap: From Incubation to a New Foundation

The adjacent move, he said, is to “step retired of nan ELISA incubation and shape our ain instauration pinch neutral overheads, member‑driven, nan aforesaid models that activity for automotive people Linux,” wherever founding members “help america style what this becomes: nan governance, nan roadmap, and standards that we set.”

Roche’s transportation to developers and companies successful nan room was blunt: Ingenuity “proved Linux belongs successful space,” but “the adjacent ngo shouldn’t commencement from scratch.”

“The mobility is, does each squad aft this rebuild from zero, aliases do we springiness them that foundation?” he asked, positioning Papermoon arsenic that shared guidelines and urging those “building for space” who admit nan shape from drones and automotive to “come talk to us” and “help america build nan instauration for nan adjacent era of space.”

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