Today’s spacecraft avionics architecture is characterisedby a broad variety of processing modules, operating systemsand interfaces for exchanging data between differentprocessing modules. The software that implementsmost of the satellite functionality has to deal with thisfact and is one of the reasons why software has becomeone of the major cost drivers in satellite projects. Similarproblems have triggered developments in other industrialdomains like AUTOSAR in the automotive area or IntegratedModular Architecture (IMA) in the aerospace industry[8]. All these initiatives are based on the definitionof standards for computing platforms and the interfacesbetween these platforms.The goals of the Open Modular Avionics Architecture forSpace Applications (OMAC4S) initiative started by Astrium,Fraunhofer FOKUS, STI, SYSGO and TTTechare to outline a solution that helps to reduce complexityand costs for space avionics significantly. This initiativeis partly funded by the German national space agency(DLR) through the project On-Board Computer SystemArchitecture (OBC-SA). In this paper we describe howstandardization and the usage of already proven technologiesfrom other industrial domains will help to limit theeffect of the software development on schedule and costsof satellite projects. In addition we will demonstrate amigration path to make these technologies available forspace applications.
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