1. SpaceDrone: Bringing Spacecraft Flight Software Closer to Earth
Nathaniel Parsons
David Edell
Bill Van Besien
Skye Basir
Mark Reid
Christopher Krupiarz

2. SpaceDrone: Project Goals
Demonstrate the versatility of APL’s CORE space flight software architecture via deployment on a commercial off-the-shelf UAV platform
Enable a low-cost, extensible platform for maturing breakthrough space technologies and algorithms
Capture the process for rapid development, software demonstration, projects
Design and execute within 10 weeks

3. SpaceDrone: Benefits and Impacts
Provide low-cost, flight-like environment for the development and evaluation of space flight technologies or algorithms
Serve as a platform to raise TRL of novel technologies
Build awareness of APL CORE flight software as mature and versatile framework suitable for a wide range of applications in and out of space
Enhance technology demonstrations to sponsors

4. SpaceDrone: Quadcopter Overview
Parrot AR.Drone 2.0
HD Camera, 720p
3 axis gyroscope
3 axis accelerometer
3 axis magnetometer
4 brushless inrunner motors
(Optional) GPS USB recorder
Pressure sensor/Ultrasound sensors for altitude measurement
60 FPS vertical QVGA camera for ground speed measurement
WiFi bgn access point
Android/iOS control app
UDP Commanding/Telemetry API
Commands: take off, land, move forward, rotate, etc

5. SpaceDrone: Comparison to Spacecraft
Spacecraft (Leon3 UT699)
SpaceDrone (RaspberryPi)
66 MHz SPARC Processor
700 MHz ARM Processor
32MB RAM
512MB RAM
RTEMS or VxWorks Real-Time OS
Linux (Real-time extensions available)
RTEMS available
L-3 InControl Ground System
µMoc/Web-MOPS Ultra-lightweight ground system
cFE, PSP, OSAL, and CORE APL FSW Applications

6. SpaceDrone: Design & Assembly
Challenge: Integrate Raspberry Pi and battery onto airframe while maintaining stable flight
Allow secure attachment of Pi, power source
Save weight
Allow stable flight

7. SpaceDrone: CORE FSW Overview
APL CORE Flight Software - collection of reusable applications and libraries
Used for satellite data systems and instruments, can be useful on any embedded system
Core Flight Executive (cFE) - portable, platform independent embedded system framework developed by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
APL-Core application software is flying on Van Allen Probes, will fly on Solar Probe Plus, and leverages software flown on MESSENGER, New Horizons, and STEREO
Supported platforms
RAD-750
Leon3
ARM
x86
x86_64

8. SpaceDrone: Software Diagram

9. SpaceDrone: New Flight Software App
Drone Interface, “DI”
Integrates seamlessly into CORE
Provides high-level interface to quadcopter avionics
Dramatically reduces network load of commanding data (enable drone ops on resource constrained links)
Easy integration with existing CORE suite
Autonomy and Fault Management Software
Guidance, Navigation, and Control
Commanding infrastructure
Telemetry output, recording, playback

10. SpaceDrone: µMOC and Web-MOPS
µMOC (“micro-MOC”)
Generic, raw telemetry and command utility
Reused from previous projects, with improvements
Web-MOPS
Graphical front-end yielding animated telemetry charts and a commanding interface
Intended to mimic APL’s mission operations environment
Enables operations of the drone in a way that is consistent with APL’s approach toward space mission operations

11. SpaceDrone: Results Current system functionality
Real-time commanding and control of commercial quadcopter
Real-time and historical telemetry from all systems and sensors
Available functionality with entire CORE suite and configuration
Autonomous, rule-macro commanding
Relative and absolute time tag commanding
File-based telemetry recording and CFDP-based playback
System configuration via memory objects
CPU and memory monitoring
SpaceDrone is ready to be used as a platform for future developments in flight software