Challenges in Designing Reusable Flight Software Modules

Abstract

The terms “modular software design” and “reusable software” have come to be a joke in much of the aerospace industry and for the government officials managing aerospace programs. Every program touts its “modular software design” but this modularity is only realized with the realm of that individual project. Part of AFRL’s Space Plug-and-play Avionics (SPA) concept is the idea of modular, plug-and-play software that can be reused across multiple space programs developed by disparate teams of developers. Just as the idea of a parts depot for plug-and-play components has been advocated where you can take a part off the shelf and plugs it in and it “just works,” the idea of a software application store has also been put forward. The need for an overall software architecture involved in the design of reusable software for SPA is discussed.