NASA selects Rapita Verification Suite for the Lunar Gateway

Rapita Systems, a leading tools and services provider to the aerospace (DO-178C) and defense industries, is proud to have been selected by NASA to support software verification for the Lunar Gateway project.

The Lunar Gateway, often simply referred to as “Gateway”, is part of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the surface of the moon. The Gateway will be a small space station in lunar orbit acting as a communications hub, science lab, short-term astronaut habitation module and holding area for rovers and other robots.

Rapita is providing both RapiTest and RapiCover for the Gateway project to make software verification activities as streamlined and efficient as possible.

RapiTest, the unit test management tool in the Rapita Verification Suite, will enable NASA engineers to author, manage and execute software tests both on-host and on-target. RapiTest is used by many of the largest aerospace companies in the world to manage their testing and is designed to flexibly integrate into any software development workflow.

Powerful features like easy-to-use test formats and flexible stubbing improve the efficiency of time-intensive software testing activities. RapiTest integrates with continuous integration and requirements management software, allowing engineers to integrate RapiTest into their existing workflow with minimal disruption to established practices.

RapiCover, the code coverage tool in the Rapita Verification Suite, will help NASA engineers reduce the effort needed to collect and analyze code coverage metrics for Gateway software.

RapiCover features some of the lowest instrumentation overheads available on the market, reducing the number of builds needed for coverage collection, and supports complex code with up to 1,000 conditions per decision. RapiCover’s efficient “merge and mark” workflow makes handling large, complex codebases more efficient than ever.

NASA’s adoption of the Rapita Verification Suite builds on Rapita’s stellar reputation within the space industry, with RVS having been deployed on high-profile satellites including the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter and Electra satellite programs.