cFS - Space ROS Integration

In future Mars and Titan missions, how will spacecraft, ground systems, and the ground, air, and water vehicles sent to the planet communicate? How will data communication take place? Many large teams are currently working on this. And the protocol used is clear: CCSDS. NASA has begun using cFS, whose code is now open source, embedded in spacecraft. Meanwhile, ground, air, and water rovers use SPACE ROS, the spacecraft version of the robot operating system. Data communication is also provided via CCSDS. In our project, we are communicating with cFS applications written in Rust, and rovers whose cores we developed using SPACE ROS. We are running both systems integrated.

What's Inside

Layer	Directory	Technology
Flight Software	apps/	C17, NASA cFS, MISRA C:2012
Robotics	ros2_ws/	Space ROS 2, ament/colcon, C++17
Simulation	simulation/	Gazebo Harmonic, ModelPlugin
Ground Tools	rust/	Rust stable, Cargo workspace
Mission Config	_defs/	CMake targets, compile-time constants

Quick Start — Docker (recommended)

Requires Docker ≥ 24 with the Compose v2 plugin. No other tools needed.

make run    # build all images and start every service (cFS, Gazebo, ROS 2, ground station, fault injector)
make logs   # stream combined logs from all services  (Ctrl-C to exit)
make stop   # stop and remove containers (volumes preserved)
make clean  # stop containers and remove named volumes

Once the stack is up:

Service	URL / Address	Protocol	Notes
Ground station operator UI	http://localhost:8080	HTTP	/api/time, /api/tc, telemetry surfaces
Ground station telemetry API	http://localhost:8080/api/time	HTTP	Liveness probe
UDP telemetry ingress	localhost:10000	UDP	CCSDS AOS frames from cFS / fault injector

First run pulls/builds all images — expect 10–20 minutes. Subsequent runs use the Docker layer cache and start in seconds.

Quick Start — Native (no Docker)

# Build C/cFS + simulation plugins + fault injector
cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug && cmake --build build

# Run C unit tests
ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure

# Build and test Rust
cargo build && cargo test && cargo clippy -- -D warnings

# ROS 2 workspace (requires Space ROS 2 install)
cd ros2_ws && colcon build --symlink-install && colcon test

Copy .env.example to .env before using the Postgres MCP server.

Using This as a Boilerplate

Forking to start a new mission? See docs/dev/fork-bootstrap.md for the runbook (rename codename, reset mission config, trim rules/skills, re-run quickstart).

Documentation

• docs/README.md — full documentation index by audience.
• docs/dev/quickstart.md — 10-minute bring-up from a fresh clone.
• docs/dev/mcp-setup.md — how to approve and configure the GitHub / Sentry / Postgres MCP servers.