Really, you'd want to use Ada for something like this (The language has survived specifically because it's managed to carve out a niche for itself in aerospace)

Really, you'd want to use Ada for something like this (The language has survived specifically because it's managed to carve out a niche for itself in aerospace). I once worked on satellite systems using Ada95 and Ada2005 (Ada is definitely not dead). The language is a pain to use but is impressive in that it catches more crap at compile-time than anything else I've seen.