Announcing the First Release of Space ROS
PickNik and the Space ROS committee are proud to announce the release of the October 2023 distribution of Space ROS Humble! This marks the first ever release of our planned quarterly release schedule of a snapshot of a release of Space ROS and its dependencies to maintain long-term interface stability for spaceflight missions. We want to be clear, however, that this initial release is not flight ready and more maturation and development resources are required.
This initial release is largely a line in the sand recognizing all of the great work that has been done already on Space ROS, by individual contributors, NASA, Open Robotics, and Blue Origin. From here, PickNik Robotics and many others are building on that foundation and momentum toward the goal of reusable and componentized robotic software for spaceflight. At PickNik, our mission is to democratize complex robotic systems on earth and in space. We see space robotics and In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM) as part of the critical path to a flourishing space economy and interplanetary human civilization. Reusable robotic componentry like Space ROS is a highly important part of extending humanity’s reach to the stars.
Huge thanks to all of the contributions from members of the committee that made this possible! In particular I’d like to thank Matt Hansen, Ivan Perez, and Brian Kempa for their contributions to both keeping things on track procedurally and to the fixes they’ve made to parts of the release process that had decayed over the time since Space ROS’s previous active development.
We’re always looking for contributors, so please chime in on issues and discussions on github.com/space-ros if you’d like to help out!
