Pre Warning: We may play fast and loose with some terminology in here for the sake of getting a post out. So if the whole GNU/Linux thing triggers you, stop reading now.
I had so long to put a post together today, but did I? Did I balls. I spent the today procrastinating heavily and watching Netflix.
I did rewatch The Martian though which prompted a thought. What sort of Open Source/Free Open Source Software is currently in use in space/by the space agencies.
This question could probably be easily answered by heading over to r/space - but I'm not going to do that right now.
Operating Systems
I remember reading some time ago (can't recall the source or it's accuracy) that NASA moved a lot of their infrastructure to a Debian base. While I'm not sure this is strictly FOSS, it's free and can be contributed to.
I can't find any information at quick glance for the ESA and certainly not for the UK Space Agency. Finding any information about that thing is just a nightmare of spaghetti links through the gov.uk website. Such a let down for the home team.
Open Source
NASA has made this info incredibly easy to discover (as always) and has a dedicated page on their site. According to the list, they currently have 560 open source software projects listed. Take a nosey here: https://code.nasa.gov/
The ESA didn't make it obvious to find on their site, but a quick search resulted in a Github organisation for them here: https://github.com/esa
As per, UKSA fails to make anything obvious.
This is a topic that has intrigued me and deserves some further investigation.