Wind River: Supporting Space
Missions for Today and Tomorrow
Space projects have zero margin for failure. Operating and maintaining electronic systems in the extreme conditions of space also has to safeguard human life and expensive mission hardware, with no compromises. Turn to an experienced partner.
Powering Commerical and Military Missions Globally
The rapid changes in the space industry affect both the commercial and military domains, with increasing overlap. Wind River has decades of expertise to help organizations adjust to industry changes.
Wind River earned NASA’s trust for missions to Mars and the moon. The company has extensive success with suppliers for their projects on everything from satellite deployment and retrieval, to advanced telescopic imaging, to the latest space suit technology, and more.
The commercial sector is expanding into new areas, including:
- Payload delivery via reusable launch platforms and propulsion systems
- Orbiting data centers
- Expanding satellite communications
- Telescopes and imaging
- Instrumentation
- Microgravity research stations
- Lunar and deep-space infrastructure: rovers, cargo transportation, network services
- Untethered mission survival that mitigates latency with earth communications: AI-based autonomous rendezvous, landing, docking and terrain navigation
- High Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC), bringing AI capabilities into deep space
Military space is transitioning from a passive support network into an actively contested warfighting domain, with developments in:
- Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations for resilience
- Space-based missile defense and interception
- Next-generation surveillance, early warning, and communications systems
- AI-based real-time threat detection and orbital maneuver-and-repair capabilities
- The adoption of commercially driven technology for faster deployment
Trust a proven space pedigree
Embedded systems software developers turn to Wind River for mission critical assurance. Because remotely controlling a planet rover requires the utmost in system reliability, and catastrophic failure cannot be corrected with a truck roll.
The world’s most trusted RTOS
Explore moreDepend on Wind River’s military and commercial space expertise for dual purpose technology
Space is becoming a warfighting domain that increasingly uses commercial technology. Wind River is uniquely positioned to enable the evolution.
Charting the future of aerospace and defense
Explore moreHarness AI for autonomy at the edge
Wind River Edge AI and cloud technology provides the solution spectrum for untethered data analysis and decision making as applied to docking systems, image processing, navigation, threat detection, HPSC, and target identification.
Learn more about Edge AI
Explore moreKey Capabilities
Proven in the Harshest Environments
Dependability for space development and operations
Edge AI Ready
Supports deterministic control and data processing
Computing Beyond the Edge
Coordinated operations among remote equipment and cloud-based systems
Security Baked In
Secure development lifecycle process
Supporting Future Missions
Wind River is actively involved in these projects, with our expertise and experience making a difference.
Nancy Grace Roman Telescope
VxWorks RTOS as the backbone for the observatory’s commanding, telemetry, and instrument operations
NASA Core Flight System (cFS) and F Prime
Space flight software, VxWorks RTOS
NASA HPSC
Next-generation flight computing system using Edge AI and RISC-V processor architectures
Case Studies
NASA Meets Satellite Project Testing and Verification Goals with Intel® Simics®
Powerful High-Fidelity Simulator Minimizes Target Hardware Dependencies and Brings Significant Long-Term Cost Savings
NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity Powered by Wind River
Could Mars Have Ever Hosted Life? Robot Explorer Seeks Answer
Astroscale
Astroscale turned to Wind River for its End-of-Life Service line (ELSA-M) to solve satellite operators’ debris removal challenges and promote sustainable space systems. VxWorks was chosen for their radiation-hardened onboard control to run Astroscale’s software applications, for vision processing to detect and track space debris, and for autonomous navigation and rendezvous operations.
