
MarCO: Interplanetary Mission Development on a CubeSat Scale [pdf] - kam
https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2016-2491
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kam
I didn't want to editorialize the title, but the buried lede for the HN
audience is that its camera subsystems run Linux and Python:

> MarCO’s camera systems, two per spacecraft, run a customized embedded Linux
> distribution on a GumStix single-board computer. A Python script spawns at
> boot time on each system, and effectively serves as the interface to the
> spacecraft. The script receives commands from and sends data to the FCPU via
> the RTC microcontroller, which acts as an I2C-UART bridge. A simple
> communications packet protocol defines the way the camera and FCPU interact,
> and includes basic data integrity checking through the use of CRC16-CCITT.
> The camera systems are powered on for short periods of time directly by FCPU
> GPIO lines to perform brief imaging campaigns, process the images, and store
> them on standard SD cards. Images can be retrieved any time the systems are
> powered.

As far as I can tell, this is the first time Python or Linux have been used
beyond earth orbit.

These spacecraft flew past Mars yesterday and took this picture [1], in
addition to successfully relaying the InSight landing telemetry.

[1]:
[https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1067189007455539202](https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1067189007455539202)

