NASA’s next lunar rover will run open-source software
From MIT Technology Review: In 2023, NASA will launch VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover), which will trek across the surface of the moon and hunt for water ice that could one day be used to make rocket fuel. The rover will be armed with the best instruments and tools that NASA can come up with: wheels that can spin properly on lunar soil, a drill that’s able to dig into extraterrestrial geology, hardware that can survive 14 days of a lunar night when temperatures sink to ˗173 °C.
But while much of VIPER is one of a kind, custom-made for the mission, much of the software that it’s running is open-source, meaning it’s available for use, modification, and distribution by anyone for any purpose. If it’s successful, the mission may be about more than just laying the groundwork for a future lunar colony—it may also be an inflection point that causes the space industry to think differently about how it develops and operates robots.
Open-source tech rarely comes to mind when we talk about space missions. It takes a tremendous amount of money to build something that can be launched into space, make its way to its proper destination, and then fulfill a specific set of tasks hundreds or thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of miles away. Keeping the know-how to pull those things off close to one’s chest is a natural inclination. Open-source software, meanwhile, is more usually associated with scrappy programming for smaller projects, like hackathons or student demos. The code that fills online repositories like GitHub is often an inexpensive solution for groups running low on cash and resources needed to build code from scratch.