About the workshop

The Workshops on Spacecraft Flight Software began in 2007 to give flight software practitioners a relaxed and informal setting in which to discuss every aspect of their work. The idea behind them is simple: by sharing new concepts and showing what works — and what does not — we improve each other’s chances of mission success in the exploration and use of space.

Modern spacecraft depend on flight software for mission success. Faster processors and more capable hardware have put software into nearly every subsystem, from power to propulsion to instrument operations, and spacecraft developers have moved well beyond infrastructure into applications that change how vehicles are operated and how data is processed on board. The workshop exists because that work benefits from being talked about in the open.

The first workshop was held in November 2007 at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. It was established by APL together with The Aerospace Corporation, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Southwest Research Institute, who are recorded permanently as its founding organizations. Hosting has rotated between member organizations ever since; past workshops lists every year, where it was held, and the recordings and slides that were kept.

The workshop is presentation-only. There are no papers or proceedings, and every submission is reviewed before it is accepted. What it draws are engineers from leading aerospace organizations around the world, presenting on current and next-generation flight architectures, on development and verification techniques, and on the problems they have not solved yet.

The workshop is organized by a volunteer committee, and this year’s committee is listed on the home page. For any question about the workshop, about presenting at it, or about sponsoring it, please get in touch.