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Sorry if this has been asked a lot, I couldn't find anything by searching the site. I'm a software engineer looking for an open-source space exploration project to contribute to in my spare time. No real restrictions, I'm happy to learn new languages or theory if it's something I find interesting.

It doesn't necessarily need to involve satellites or probes, it could be astronomy or even websites and support systems but it needs to be supporting space exploration to keep my interest.

Thanks in advance!

PearsonArtPhoto
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LiamRyan
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  • You may want to look at https://github.com/barrycarter/bcapps/blob/master/ASTRO and/or contact me at carter.barry@gmail.com, though I'm not sure how much of what I do constitutes "space exploration". –  Aug 06 '17 at 15:44
  • Thanks Barry, I was hoping for something more organization based but I'll keep it in mind if I can't find something like that – LiamRyan Aug 06 '17 at 20:18
  • One of my favorite python packages is Skyfield. It's open source and the 1.0 release works nicely. It's based on solid JPL routines and has a lot of potential for extension, but without more information of what aspects you are interested, it's hard to know if there is potential here. What do you mean "organization based"? – uhoh Aug 07 '17 at 06:30
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    Thanks @uhoh that seems like something I could help out on. By organizational I meant something with a network of coders or contributors like an open space initiative or similar but it's not a hard requirement. – LiamRyan Aug 07 '17 at 11:28
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    There is also of course Moonwards and there are people working on that who are also active here. There is also an SE chat room. – uhoh Aug 07 '17 at 12:39
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    @SMC Also, check out our software resources repository. Not all of them are open source, and those that are may not be accepting contributions, but it wouldn't hurt to check. – called2voyage Aug 07 '17 at 13:48
  • I know this is an extremely old post, but I'm interested in starting a data-driven mission simulation project. I see it as a software package that will simulate a mission, from concept to landing, and allow us to evaluate various types of architectures, all drawing from real data. If you're still interested in this I'd be happy to chat with you (mstachowsky@gmail.com) – Michael Stachowsky Feb 15 '18 at 18:51

3 Answers3

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You might be interested in the work of Libre Space Foundation it's a non-profit organization that develops open-source technologies (they are based in Greece).

LSF builds several open-source projects for space applications. Including SatNOGS a network of satellite ground-stations and has also build UPSat the first open-hardware and software satellite currently in orbit. They run an open-source technologies event together with ESA and the Librecube project OSCW. They maintain a forum for open-source space technologies at their community website. And you might want to check out their gitlab pages for more projects.

PS: I'm actively involved in their organization

elkos
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Pure Space Exploration is a bit tricky to have an open source project, as many of the items fall under the realm of ITAR restrictions, which probits the sharing of technical data. That being said, let me point you in a few directions:

AMSAT- The amateur radio satellite group. This group has been around for a long while, building amateur radio satellites. They have a list of tracking software, which includes a number of open sourced tasks. AMSAT-NA has a larger list of software projects as well, which has a few open sourced items.

NASA- Has a list of open source software endeavors.

ESA- Same thing, open source projects.

I'm sure there are university projects out there as well, but these should give you a good start.

I'm not sure that all of the projects will accept pull requests, but take a look at the ones with git hubs and see if they have accepted pull requests.

PearsonArtPhoto
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    This is a great list! As you point out,and according to this answer "open source" does not always mean available to the general public. Is there a quick way to tell which of the items in the NASA page you link to are public versus restricted access? – uhoh Jan 12 '18 at 23:25
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You can check out https://github.com/nasa and https://code.nasa.gov/. I was just googling open source space projects and I saw those links as well as this post so here you go.