Open Source Missions for Public Engagement in Space Exploration

Abstract

The name “Open Source Mission” (OSM) is derived from the software development community. The open source concept refers to a development methodology, which enables the general public to contribute to designing and developing a software application by having access to its source code. Today, the open source principles and practices are commonly applied to the development of source code for software that is made available for public collaboration, and the results are usually released as open source software. Our team proposes a similar approach for space exploration mission design: the OSM Project