Ready for liftoff: Lockheed Martin uses Red Hat to host NASA’s Artemis mission simulations

Lockheed Martin’s Orion Integrated Test Lab near Denver, Colorado. (Credit: Lockheed Martin)

Today, we celebrate the one-year anniversary of the launch of NASA’s successful Artemis I mission. Launched to the Moon on November 16, 2022, Artemis I was the first in a series of missions that will ultimately see the space agency return humans to the Moon. 

Preparations for Artemis I required an extensive amount of testing and analysis of the Orion spacecraft's flight software. Orion developer and prime contractor Lockheed Martin needed to simulate the performance of the spacecraft under different conditions and scenarios to ensure optimal performance of the flight systems and return Artemis I safely to Earth.

To do so, Lockheed Martin selected Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux to create a secure private cloud environment for hosting simulation builds, testing, and analysis of the Orion spacecraft’s flight software.

Red Hat OpenStack Platform: deploying simulation build and test environments, efficiently

Lockheed Martin’s software developers used Red Hat OpenStack Platform to host simulation build and test environments for end-to-end runs and perform functional testing of the flight system. Developers ran multiple versions of the flight software in parallel, which helped optimize hardware use and lower demands on operations teams. 

The software developers also relied heavily on Red Hat OpenStack Platform’s automated capabilities. The Lockheed Martin team created a standardized service catalog of evolving virtual machine images that could be deployed quickly, repeatedly and consistently. Retirement defaults and shutdown procedures were also automated to maximize efficient resource utilization. This helped save the team significant time that would otherwise have been spent attending to these procedures, freeing them up to focus on accelerating the pace of innovation.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux: support for a successful simulation, from launch to landing

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the standard operating system for mission simulations. The world’s leading enterprise Linux platform gave Lockheed Martin the stability, security, high performance, and dependability needed to perform a successful simulation from launch to landing. With the support of Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Lockheed Martin team successfully built, tested and proved a 28-day simulation across different scenarios. The simulation was completed well ahead of the launch of Artemis I, helping to propel NASA’s safe and triumphant return to the Moon.

Looking ahead to Artemis II

NASA’s next mission, Artemis II, is scheduled to launch in late 2024. This Artemis mission will have crew members aboard, making it the first NASA crewed mission to the Moon since Apollo 17.  With human lives at stake, it will be even more critical to analyze, test, and prepare for a successful and safe flight. Lockheed Martin, NASA, and Red Hat will be working together to make sure that the launch and return of Artemis II goes just as smoothly as its predecessor.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after a 25.5 day mission to the Moon (Credit: NASA)