Wind River in Aerospace and Defense
With technology proven by more than 330 customers over 750 safety programs in more than 120 civilian and military aircraft, Wind River® has over three decades of experience helping to build safe, secure, and reliable computing systems for demanding commercial aircraft, space exploration, and military operations.
Companies Are Relying on Wind River Technology
WIND RIVER SUPPORTS AIRBUS IN ITS CERTIFICATION MILESTONE FOR AUTOMATIC AIR-TO-AIR REFUELING (A3R)
Wind River has worked with Airbus to support the A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport (MRTT) aircraft for automatic air-to-air refueling (A3R). The MRTT aircraft is the world’s first tanker to be certified for automatic air-to-air refueling boom operations in daylight.
Airbus uses VxWorks® 653 for the A330 MRTT air-to-air refueling boom system (ARBS). This system is comprised of multiple ARINC 653-compliant applications running at multiple levels of safety-criticality in a multi-core environment. It has achieved DO-178C DAL A certification.
With this development, the Airbus A330 MRTT A3R capability has earned the distinction of being certified by the Spanish National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA), which involves multiple applications meeting both ED-12C and DO-178C DAL A standards running simultaneously on multiple cores on a multi-core processor.
VXWORKS SERVES AS THE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION FOR ASTROSCALE SUSTAINABLE SPACE SYSTEMS
Astroscale’s servicer spacecraft embeds a radiation-hardened onboard computer running Astroscale’s software applications on VxWorks® from Wind River®. VxWorks is responsible for the computer vision processing — not only for the space debris detection and precise tracking but also for the autonomous navigation and rendezvous operations.
Astroscale develops innovative solutions to create sustainable space systems and mitigate the growing and hazardous buildup of debris in space. Astroscale’s end-of-life service line (ELSA-M) provides a space debris solution to safely and responsibly capture and retire multiple satellites in one mission.
An in-orbit demonstration (IOD) mission to capture an inactive satellite is anticipated to launch in 2025. This will be the first time a commercial active debris removal (ADR) satellite will complete the end-to-end operations of a removal service with a full-sized and fully representative client satellite. The mission is part of Astroscale’s partnership with OneWeb and the European Space Agency (ESA).
MEET INDUSTRY SAFETY CERTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS WITH WIND RIVER
Wind River technology has been powering the safest, most secure devices in the world for more than 40 years, at the highest criticality levels and in the toughest environments. Based on this and our OS expertise, Wind River is uniquely positioned to help customers enter the safety certification world mixing different kinds of operating systems, including Linux, while better utilizing valuable resources and developing and innovating with confidence.
Talk to us. We are here to share our experience. Email us at inquiries@windriver.com. Call us at +800-4988-4988.