COROTLOG is the on-board software for the satellite COROT as German technical contribution for the Space mission COROT. The german project head is Dr. H. Rauer, DLR Institute of Planetary Resaerch (COROT).
High reliable operation over at least 150 days without interruption, supporting the high precision spacecraft pointing and reducing the data volume by factor of about 400 are the key aspects of the on-board software COROTLOG. This embedded real-time software is developed in a co-operation of DLR/Berlin, engineering office Ulmer/Frankfurt-Oder and CLIPhIT/Berlin as well as CNES/France and LESIA/France responsible for the COROT as system.
COROT is a space mission approved by the French Space Agency CNES, with a participation of Austria , Belgium , Brazil , Germany , Spain and ESA/ESTEC.
It is the first space mission dedicated to stellar seismology and the study of extrasolar planets and will be launched mid 2006 .
The spacecraft consists of one payload, a ~30 cm telescope with an array of CCD's as detectors. It will monitor the light curves of well chosen stars by means of high precision photometry.
DLR/Berlin will make scientific and technical contributions to the COROT mission. Scientific contributions include the set-up of a ground-based transit search program ('Berlin Exoplanet Search Telescope'), calculations of the dynamical development of planetary systems and potential follow-up observations. Further information is available at www.dlr.de/COROT .
The on-board software is dedicated for controlling of the instrument, processing of scientific data as well as providing of error angle data for spacecraft pointing. It runs on a DPU developed by ESA and EADS Astrium GmbH based on a product family already used for other Space Missions e.g. Rosetta and Venus Express . The software communicates over SpaceWire interfaces with the BEX (i.e. data extractor unit, developed by the IWF , Institute of Space Research, Graz) and the 1553 std MIL-bus for telecommand and telemetry exchange with the Proteus platform (provided by Alcatel, France).
The real-time core of the Application software is VIRTUOSO (new name VspWorks ) a fast and small Real Time Operating System from Windriver.