F Prime: The Innovative Open-Source Software Powering NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter



Created at NASA’s JPL, the open-source flight software called F Prime isn’t just powering humanity’s first interplanetary helicopter; it’s also powering inspiration at multiple universities.
When NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter hovered above the Red Planet April 19 on its maiden voyage, the moment was hailed as the first instance of powered, controlled flight on another planet. Figuring out how to fly on Mars, where the air is thin but gravity is about a third of that on Earth, took years of work. Along with the challenge of developing a craft that was up to the task, the mission needed software to make the unprecedented flights possible.
So they turned to F Prime, a reusable, multi-mission flight software framework designed for CubeSats, small spacecraft, and instruments. The software was architected by Tim Canham in 2013 as part of a technology exploration effort at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California with the aim of creating a streamlined, low-cost software development approach that would allow components written for one application to be reused easily in other applications and run on a range of processors.
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