Flight software development for a university microsatellite

The development of satellite flight software for time-critical applications is a challenging task. In the paper, the development of the flight software for the Cheng Kung University Technology Experimental satellite (CKUTEX) microsatellite is presented. The flight software is responsible for command validation and execution, data reception, store and downlink, and satellite health monitoring. To meet these design requirements as well as to accommodate potential faults, a systematic, hierarchical approach is adopted to decompose the software system into a set of Computer Software Configuration Items (CSCI). This greatly simplifies the coding and maintenance of the software and, consequently, ensures the modularity, reusability, and transparency of the software. For the space application, the CKUTEX flight software is also designed with a fault detection and recovery scheme. In the paper, the development approach of the flight software, subsystem-level verification, and system tests are discussed.