European Space Agency Selects AdaCore’s Qualified Multitasking Solution for Spacecraft Software Development

 AdaCore, a trusted provider of software development and verification tools, today announced that the European Space Agency (ESA) has selected AdaCore 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 customisation for specific platforms and capabilities, and is suitable for qualification in different domains, particularly those in which certification or a reduced footprint is needed.

The result, a pre-qualified, multitasking runtime named Ravenscar SFP QUAL, targets Ada development on LEON2 and LEON3 boards. It is pre-qualified according to the European Cooperation for Space Standardisation’s (ECSS) Criticality Level B for software. ECSS is an initiative established to develop a coherent, single set of user-friendly standards for use in all European space activities. ECSS-E-ST-40C and ECSS-Q-ST-80C are the software-related standards for use in all European space projects and applications.

As part of the validation and verification activities, a comprehensive test suite is also being developed to check compliance with restricted Ada profiles.

“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 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.”

“AdaCore has a long and successful track record working with the ESA and the Space industry,” said Jamie Ayre, Commercial Director at AdaCore. “We are pleased that ESA recognises the benefits of GNAT Pro and the Ravenscar profile run-time libraries for designing, developing, and now qualifying mission-critical space applications. We look forward to supporting ESA’s software efforts on this and other projects long into the future.”

About AdaCore

Founded in 1994, AdaCore supplies software development and verification tools for mission-critical, safety-critical and security-critical systems. Four flagship products highlight the company’s offerings:

• The GNAT Pro development environment, a complete toolset for designing, implementing, and managing applications that demand high reliability and maintainability. GNAT Pro is available for Ada and also for C and C++.
• The CWE-Compatible CodePeer advanced static analysis tool, an automatic Ada code reviewer and validator that can detect and eliminate errors both during development and retrospectively on existing software. CodePeer can detect a number of the “Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Errors” in the MITRE Corporation’s Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE).
• The SPARK Pro environment, a toolset providing full formal verification oriented toward high-assurance systems with stringent security requirements.
• The QGen model-based development tool suite for safety-critical control systems, providing a qualifiable and customisable code generator and static verifier for a safe subset of Simulink^® and Stateflow^® models, and a model-level debugger.

Over the years customers have used AdaCore products to field and maintain a wide range of critical applications in domains such as commercial and military avionics, automotive, railway, space, defence systems, air traffic management/control, medical devices, and financial services. AdaCore has an extensive and growing worldwide customer base; seewww.adacore.com/industries/ for further information.

AdaCore products are open source and come with expert online support provided by the developers themselves. The company has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris. www.adacore.com/

About ESA

The European Space Agency (ESA) provides Europe’s gateway to space. ESA is an intergovernmental organisation, created in 1975, with the mission to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space delivers benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. 

ESA has 22 Member States: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Slovenia is an Associate Member. ESA has established formal cooperation with six Member States of the EU. Canada takes part in some ESA programmes under a Cooperation Agreement. By coordinating the financial and intellectual resources of its members, ESA can undertake programmes and activities far beyond the scope of any single European country. It is working in particular with the EU on implementing the Galileo and Copernicus programmes as well as with Eumetsat for the development of meteorological missions. ESA develops the launchers, spacecraft and ground facilities needed to keep Europe at the forefront of global space activities. 

Today, it develops and launches satellites for Earth observation, navigation, telecommunications and astronomy, sends probes to the far reaches of the Solar System and cooperates in the human exploration of space. ESA also has a strong applications programme developing services in Earth observation, navigation and telecommunications. www.esa.int/ESA