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This is great. What did NASA use before? I always got the impression they were still using a Unix-type OS and CDE or some other Motif based WM far into the 2000

This is great. What did NASA use before? I always got the impression they were still using a Unix-type OS and CDE or some other Motif based WM far into the 2000's. This would really modernize things. And I love how the whole project is so clearly made to enable contribution from the open source community. Really aspiring to leverage open source in the best possible way. I guess they'd have to make it as easy as possible because the project might not have many uses outside of NASA.

oso2k 8y ago
I spent the bulk of the first 8.5 years of my career in and around JPL’s Spacecraft Assembly Facility (SAF), Test Engineering Lab (TEL), Assembly, Test, and Launch Operations (ATLO), aka, Building 179. A lot of software systems in Operations a little more than 10 years ago were (Open?)Motif on Solaris. I remember helping a colleague transition to Qt when Motif’s event system just couldn’t handle an extra 30 data streams we were projecting for use by Mars Science Lander. It was something like a 30 minute demo of Qt Designer (with Hal, the software engineer actually tasked) and him giving up a weekend to full replace all the Motif code. The codebase had shrunk by more than half, all 30 additional data streams had been added, and the Ops Engineers reported that the app was noticeably snappier even with the new streams.
larkinrichards 8y ago
The truth is, there are still 5+ competing options within NASA, with each center having staff familiar with different tools, and with a generally large learning curve for new tools it is a hard sell to use something new. Most of the time, the tools you used on the last mission are the same tool you will use on the next mission. We’ve seen remarkable uptick in OpenMCT usage at different centers purely because it is open source and folks can use it for free. Other similar products require you to contact the supporting org, request a delivery of the software, spend days/weeks deploying and configuring it for your mission, before you can even begin to evaluate the software. We’re finding that by lowering barriers to access and by allowing others to modify it to suit their needs, we are getting much better buy in from operators and missions.
pjmlp 8y ago
Mostly Netbeans based UIs AFAIK.
cameronwp 8y ago
I'm at NASA JSC. We're using Open MCT in a few research projects to monitor simulated spacewalks. We've got dashboards where we're tracking a mix of human physiology data (heart rate, CO2 flow, etc) and spacesuit telemetry (that's mostly simulated at this point). Great tool! We're looking at relying on it more heavily. I'm actually planning on developing a new widget for Open MCT in the near future :)

oso2k 8y ago

I spent the bulk of the first 8.5 years of my career in and around JPL’s Spacecraft Assembly Facility (SAF), Test Engineering Lab (TEL), Assembly, Test, and Launch Operations (ATLO), aka, Building 179. A lot of software systems in Operations a little more than 10 years ago were (Open?)Motif on Solaris. I remember helping a colleague transition to Qt when Motif’s event system just couldn’t handle an extra 30 data streams we were projecting for use by Mars Science Lander. It was something like a 30 minute demo of Qt Designer (with Hal, the software engineer actually tasked) and him giving up a weekend to full replace all the Motif code. The codebase had shrunk by more than half, all 30 additional data streams had been added, and the Ops Engineers reported that the app was noticeably snappier even with the new streams.

larkinrichards 8y ago

The truth is, there are still 5+ competing options within NASA, with each center having staff familiar with different tools, and with a generally large learning curve for new tools it is a hard sell to use something new. Most of the time, the tools you used on the last mission are the same tool you will use on the next mission. We’ve seen remarkable uptick in OpenMCT usage at different centers purely because it is open source and folks can use it for free. Other similar products require you to contact the supporting org, request a delivery of the software, spend days/weeks deploying and configuring it for your mission, before you can even begin to evaluate the software. We’re finding that by lowering barriers to access and by allowing others to modify it to suit their needs, we are getting much better buy in from operators and missions.

pjmlp 8y ago

Mostly Netbeans based UIs AFAIK.

cameronwp 8y ago

I'm at NASA JSC. We're using Open MCT in a few research projects to monitor simulated spacewalks. We've got dashboards where we're tracking a mix of human physiology data (heart rate, CO2 flow, etc) and spacesuit telemetry (that's mostly simulated at this point). Great tool! We're looking at relying on it more heavily. I'm actually planning on developing a new widget for Open MCT in the near future :)