Jackson and Tull (J&T), in cooperation with Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), will significantly reduce the cost of satellite flight software and mission operations by advancing the state of the art in command and data handling systems. Flight software development, upgrades, and migration to orbit represent significant portions of these costs. We will develop a Common Integrated Processor Environment (CIPE) flight system model with an adaptive scheduler/executive (ASE) to reduce the end-to-end, life cycle cost of mission operations. The CIPE will utilize commercial operating systems, software, and network technologies to provide commonality between ground and deployed systems, enabling low cost development and migration of flight software to orbit. The ASE will utilize time independent commands to flexibly respond to activity failures. Phase I results in the design for a CIPE compatible with space environments, a conceptual system-level design for a flight-like system, and test methodology for the Phase II demonstration. Phase II encompasses build of the demonstration system to validate the Phase I design and test of innovative onboard scheduling techniques currently under development at STScI. Potential Commercial Application(s): The successful design and validation of a CIPE that provides commonality between ground and onboard systems with the benefit of bringing significant cost and resource reductions to the flight software life cycle is directly applicable to the commercial satellite market. J&T plans to produce compatible ground/spacecraft systems based on the CIPE design model and make them available to commercial satellite providers based on the above incentives. The advanced development funded under the STTR Program will provide the Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) required to bring the J&T R&D and STScI research products to the commercial market in a reasonable time, at which time J&T will have the expertise and financial strength to pursue this commercially.
