Experience and Lessons Learned from Open Sourcing NASA AMMOS’s Mission Control Software

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Science Mission Directorate (SMD) sponsors the Advanced Multi-Mission Operations System (AMMOS), which is a set of tools and services that provide reliable, reusable, and repeatable space operation capabilities to as many NASA missions as possible. AMMOS supports NASA’s goal of achieving greater science at lower costs. Mission Control System (MCS) is one of the four functional elements under NASA AMMOS, and it includes mission-proven software such as the AMMOS Mission Data Processing and Control System (AMPCS). The Multimission Ground Systems and Services (MGSS) Program at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) manages the NASA AMMOS. To broaden their reach and increase their adoption at other NASA centers and partner organizations, MGSS is releasing the following set of NASA AMMOS mission control software as open source, as early as June 2023: AMPCS, Mission Control Web Service (MCWS), Open Mission Control Technologies (Open MCT) for MCWS, Spacecraft Language Interpreter and Collector II (SLINC II), Command Translation Subsystem (CTS), Telecommand Utilities (TCU), and Standards Support System (SSS). There are several challenges in open sourcing this software set. The code, its documentation, and accompanying data contain controlled unclassified information that cannot be made public. Open sourcing must also comply with United States export control regulations. The software set has dependencies on other proprietary software that are not publicly available. The budget to perform the open sourcing work is small. None of the software set’s maintainers have any previous experience hosting and running an open-source project or managing communities for such projects. A team of 6 software engineers (1.4 full-time equivalents, or FTE) at JPL and NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) has been employing techniques to remove or replace the software set’s non-releasable code, documentation, data, and private external dependencies. They are also refactoring the source structure and documentation to follow open-source software style conventions. Open sourcing NASA’s premier mission control software set will encourage more centers and partners to use it for their future space missions. They will gain the ability to extend the software themselves to satisfy their unique mission needs, inspect problems directly when they encounter them, audit its cybersecurity, repair defects quickly, and benefit from the greater open-source community support to use the product better. NASA AMMOS is also expected to benefit from this future community, as the latter contributes code and improvements to the software. Keywords: Mission Control, Open Source, AMMOS, AMPCS, Software Engineering, Ground System