The flexibility of a full-featured OS

I thought the panelists raised a number of interesting points about using Linux in aerospace applications and space missions. My biggest regret as the moderator was that I didn't follow up on the comments about the benefits of using the Linux shell after deployment.

In my research, a number of space mission developers reported that the ability to perform new operations "on the fly", that were not in the original software or operational designs for the mission, was extremely useful. I think that using the "Unix way" of composing new features using command line combinations of existing programs, provides some great flexibility for changing system activities in the "field". It is also relatively easy with a full-featured OS to upload new user-space programs, after deployment. These are things easily done with Linux, that are probably different from most historical RTOS deployments in space missions.