Re: Raspberry Pi SenseHAT / AstroPi

[Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com>]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2018 07:45:17 -0800 (PST), slos <new.stephane.los@gmail.com>
declaimed the following:


>Since it was designed to go in space, I would have thought an Ada library to be available... ;-)
>But I could not find one. :-(
>

	It may have gone into space -- but it is not part of safety
critical/operational control electronics; it is isolated (other than power
supply I suspect*) from the rest of the environment.

	Per astro-pi.org itself, the "missions" MUST use Python (given that the
advanced mission is limited to <19 year old, I doubt any candidates would
know enough Ada to interface with hardware). 

cf:
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/edu/Mission_Space_Lab_coding_rules.pdf

	Astro-Pi submittals are in Python source code so the reviewers can
easily ensure that no potentially malicious code exists (no use of
networking libraries, no spawning of external programs, etc.). Use of most
any other language would mean using /binary/ executables -- and that would
mean, for safety review, that the reviewers would have to also build the
programs from sources in order to provide them to the spacecraft. Much too
much overhead on the staff.


* based upon the coding rules, they are networked to the spacecraft systems
(which would support the upload of selected experiments) but are not
permitted to use networking during runs.
-- 
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/