Space ROS: An Open-Source Framework for Space Robotics and Flight Software

Abstract

Space ROS is an open-source spacecraft flight software framework for developing robotic applications for space being developed by NASA, Open Robotics, Blue Origin, and others. It is designed to be platform independent, portable and project independent. Space ROS is a fork of the ROS 2 framework and conforms to the ROS 2 Application Programming Interface (API) that has been hardened to be compatible with the demands of safety-critical space robotics applications. The intent of Space ROS is to provide a robust framework for space robotic applications where ROS 2 applications can be reused with little to no modification enabling the space community to take advantage of the innovation of the ROS community. This will shorten the time for development of novel space robotics capabilities, enable reuse of capabilities between missions, and lower the life-cycle cost of new robotic missions. This paper details the objectives of Space ROS, the motivation for its creation, the approach for its development and validation, as well as initial benchmarking results.