Vermont Technical College’s Lunar CubeSat launched to test the systems that will be used for the eventual lunar mission.
Here we talk about the NASA-sponsored satellite
from Vermont Technical College uses GNAT Pro and SPARK.
In fact today, AdaCore and Altran announced a new space application for the GNAT Pro technology and SPARK
language toolset, with the successful launch of Vermont Technical College’s
Lunar CubeSat.
Connectikpeople has discovered that, the tiny satellite, measuring only
10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm and weighing 1.1 kg, was launched
into a 500 km earth orbit, where it will remain for about three years to
test the systems that will be used for the eventual lunar
mission.
For those who unfamiliar, Connectikpeople recalls that:
·
The CubeSat project is part of
NASA’s ELaNa IV program (Educational Launch of Nano-satellites).
·
The CubeSat’s navigation and
control software was developed in SPARK/Ada using AdaCore’s GNAT Programming
Studio (GPS) IDE and GNAT Pro compiler and exploiting Altran’s SPARK toolset to
prove the absence of run-time errors.
·
The software was developed at
Vermont Technical College by a team of undergraduate students under the
direction of Dr. Peter Chapin.
About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software
solutions for Ada, a state-of-the-art programming language designed for large,
long-lived applications where safety, security, and reliability are critical.
AdaCore's flagship product is the open source GNAT Pro development environment,
which comes with expert on-line support and is available on more platforms than
any other Ada technology. AdaCore has an extensive world-wide customer base;
see http://www.adacore.com/home/company/customers/ for further information.
Ada and GNAT Pro see a growing usage in high-integrity and safety-certified
applications, including space-based systems, commercial aircraft avionics,
military systems, air traffic management/control, railroad systems, and medical
devices, and in security-sensitive domains, such as financial services. The
SPARK Pro toolset, available from AdaCore, is especially useful in such
contexts.
AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters
in Paris. www.adacore.com
About Altran
Altran is a global leader in innovation and high-tech engineering
consulting. The company is a trusted innovation and engineering partner of UK
businesses throughout the automotive, aerospace, defence, energy, life
sciences, rail and telecoms sectors. Its mission is to enable organisations to
develop, deploy and integrate leading-edge systems, products and services. In
the UK, Altran’s offices are located in Bath, Bristol, London, Loughborough,
Manchester, Slough and Warwick. The Altran Group has 500 major clients and a
global network of 20,000 employees, operating in over 20 countries. www.altran.co.uk.
