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“ 3.1. Event-driven Operations The JWST science operations will be driven by ASCII (instead of binary command blocks) on-board scripts, written in a customized
by jazzyjackson 5y ago
“ 3.1. Event-driven Operations
The JWST science operations will be driven by ASCII (instead of binary command blocks) on-board scripts, written in a customized version of JavaScript. The script interpreter is run by the flight software, which is written in C++. The flight software operates the spacecraft and the science instruments.”
and in section 3.5, sounds like javascript just has an API to lower level system functions:
“ ScriptEase JavaScript allows for a modular design flow, where on-board scripts call lower-level scripts that are defined as functions.”
[0] https://www.stsci.edu/~idash/pub/dashevsky0607rcsgso.pdf https://www.stsci.edu/~idash/pub/dashevsky0607rcsgso.pdf
- nerdponx 5y agoI am mostly curious as to how they came to JS as the embedded scripting language of choice, as opposed to Lua or Scheme or anything else.
- bumby 5y ago"They" is likely the contractor. It may be simply a choice that allowed them to be lowest bidder
- writeslowly 5y agoIt would have had to be an interpreter that was available off the shelf when this was being designed (so late 90s or early 2000s?) that ran on vxWorks on an old PowerPC processor. That could have limited the available choices.