Last year, Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES allowed an Ariane 5 rocket to transport a TV satellite into space, which is made by Astrium and runs entirely on latest generation software.

Watch the brand new video to learn how the University’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) has contributed to the new software used here.

Every single one of the programs used to operate the satellite was written in the new satellite language SPELL. The acronym stands for ”Satellite Procedure Execution Language & Library.” What we are talking about here is a new standard, which will help the many different programming languages that were previously used to operate satellites and their subsystems to be unified under one roof.

The University of Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) has contributed substantially to SPELL’s being adopted in the operations of Astrium satellites. To this end, SnT scientists took an existing mathematical tool and refined it getting it ready for practical application, with whose help the procedures written in different native languages can now be translated into SPELL using a fully automated process.

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The new satellite language SPELL. The acronym stands for ”Satellite Procedure Execution Language and Library.”

 

Satellite Procedure Execution Language & Library (SPELL)

Pictures: (c) SES Global S.A.