Photo: Adacore

The European Space Agency (ESA) selected AdaCore, a provider of software development and verification tools, to provide a qualified multitasking solution for spacecraft software development to support multiple ongoing and future ESA projects.

As part of this contract, AdaCore has implemented a pre-qualified version of the Ravenscar Small Footprint (SFP) library — a configurable Ada run-time library that implements the Ravenscar profile, allows customization for specific platforms and capabilities, and is suitable for qualification in different domains, particularly those in which certification or a reduced footprint is needed.

“Reliability of mission-critical software is a key factor for ESA satellite missions,” said Mark Dean, Software Engineer, European Space Agency. “We are confident that AdaCore’s tools and run-time environment are able to provide a solid base for the development and qualification of such applications. The recent cooperation between ESA and AdaCore to pre-qualify the generic elements of AdaCore’s Ravenscar SFP run-time towards the European Cooperation for Space Standardization (ECSS) software standards ensures these tools are readily available to the European space industry and offers a clear path towards software qualification on a number of upcoming missions.”