129

One is attached to the International Space Station, and the other is collecting data as a stand-alone satellite. The latter would meet its permanent demise after burning up in the atmosphere if the mission were to be terminated.

A 2023 review by NASA concluded that the data they'd been providing had been "of exceptionally high quality."

The observatories provide detailed carbon dioxide measurements across various locations, allowing scientists to get a detailed glimpse of how human activity is affecting greenhouse gas emissions.

(Ex NASA employee) David Crisp said it "makes no economic sense to terminate NASA missions that are returning incredibly valuable data," pointing out it costs only $15 million per year to maintain both observatories, a tiny fraction of the agency's $25.4 billion budget.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 6 points 2 days ago

Probably still something Unix-like?

[-] invalidusernamelol@hexbear.net 6 points 2 days ago

It's usually a stripped down version of the Linux kernel. See my post above where some cube sats use the kernel as an x86 bootloader.

They probably just fork BusyBox for most stuff, then strip it even more if they need to. Honestly just doing development with podman/docker targeting your architecture is the most obvious solution. Especially since you can adjust your environment or target multiple different possibile architectures (assuming the board itself is built by a contractor) without too much headache.

[-] someone@hexbear.net 5 points 2 days ago

One of the interesting things about the rapidly-improving RISC-V architecture is that NASA has decided to standardize on it for future in-space systems. Of course who knows when or if that's going to happen now of course.

[-] invalidusernamelol@hexbear.net 3 points 2 days ago

That's actually really sick. Makes sense too since RISC-V can be super power efficient and it's much easier to compile for. I'd guess that even as they get their budget cut, that part will remain operational. Too many private companies that will want to switch to RISC-V and will want to be able to just crib the tooling from a government agency.

[-] palacedoctor@hexbear.net 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Look up RTEMS and VxWorks if you're curious

[-] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 1 points 14 hours ago

This is indeed what I wanted to know. Thank you. deng-salute

this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
129 points (100.0% liked)

news

24213 readers
586 users here now

Welcome to c/news! Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember... we're all comrades here.

Rules:

-- PLEASE KEEP POST TITLES INFORMATIVE --

-- Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed. --

-- All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. --

-- If you are citing a twitter post as news please include not just the twitter.com in your links but also nitter.net (or another Nitter instance). There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ or archive them as you would any other reactionary source using e.g. https://archive.today . Twitter screenshots still need to be sourced or they will be removed --

-- Mass tagging comm moderators across multiple posts like a broken markov chain bot will result in a comm ban--

-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--

-- Neglecting to use content warnings or NSFW when dealing with disturbing content will be removed until in compliance. Users who are consecutively reported due to failing to use content warnings or NSFW tags when commenting on or posting disturbing content will result in the user being banned. --

-- Using April 1st as an excuse to post fake headlines, like the resurrection of Kissinger while he is still fortunately dead, will result in the poster being thrown in the gamer gulag and be sentenced to play and beat trashy mobile games like 'Raid: Shadow Legends' in order to be rehabilitated back into general society. --

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS