Harry Wang, (Columbia University, Houston)- We Have a Problem: Systems Challenges of Large-Scale Spacecraft Deployments

Abstract: The collapsing cost of space launches has disrupted the way satellites are deployed, shifting the industry from a model of a few expensive fault-tolerant high-orbit satellites to arrays of commodity low-cost SmallSats in low-Earth orbit. However, satellite software hasn’t kept up with the hardware trends, and missions are still using the ad-hoc flight software infrastructure built for expensive one-off missions in high-altitude orbits, even as constellations of tens or even hundreds of SmallSats come online. This motivates new approaches rooted in verification and language design.

In this talk, I present Orbital, which extends eBPF’s symbolic execution to derive tight worst-case execution time bounds for hard real-time multi-tenant scheduling on SmallSats, and Radshield, a programming model that efficiently replicates execution and protects commodity hardware from radiation-induced silent data corruption. I’ll also discuss ongoing work with NASA-JPL to adapt WebAssembly as the onboard command DSL for their flight software framework, and open problems at the intersection of software systems and space that this community is well-positioned to tackle.