Wind River's Role in the Historic Artemis Missions | Wind River
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May 28, 2026<br>Aerospace & Defense
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Wind River's Role in the Historic Artemis Missions
NASA’s Artemis II mission was a crucial step toward a sustained return to lunar exploration. The four astronauts spent nearly 10 days on the Orion spacecraft in April 2026 on a journey that included a lunar flyby and a safe splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.<br>Artemis II turned years of preparation into real‑world success, clearing the path for upcoming crewed lunar landings and laying the foundation for long‑term human exploration of the moon — and eventually Mars. Its primary scientific accomplishment was the successful crewed test of NASA’s deep‑space exploration systems. Orion’s life support, navigation, propulsion, and communications systems all performed as designed. Together with the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, Artemis II validated the technologies and operations needed for future missions.<br>Like everyone else in the aerospace community, we at Wind River are proud of and excited about the successful space mission — but we take special pride in knowing that the Artemis II mission benefited from Wind River’s product and service contributions.<br>Wind River Contributions<br>Space exploration is the very essence of mission critical. Everything must work reliably, predictably, and with an acceptable amount of risk. That’s why Wind River’s VxWorks® is so often selected for aerospace programs. For example, its deterministic performance, when allied to redundancy built into the system design, ensures that failovers between control systems occur within acceptable time limits.<br>Here are several places where VxWorks and other Wind River technologies made a difference in the Artemis II mission.<br>Orion flight software simulation<br>In the early development stages of Orion’s flight software, NASA’s Kedalion lab relied heavily on virtual testing. Creating an accurate digital twin of the target hardware lets spacecraft engineers test unmodified code in a virtual environment long before physical components are produced, accelerating development and reducing cost. Engineers can validate algorithms and analyze results directly from their desktop environments.<br>For Orion, Wind River enabled full system simulation for virtual testing using Intel® Simics®. Because the Intel Simics digital twins so closely mirrored the actual hardware, the flight software could eventually be transitioned from virtual platforms to hybrid hardware emulators and physical engineering development units.<br>SLS control systems<br>The SLS control systems encompass the hardware and software that guide, steer, and stabilize the launch vehicle, from liftoff through ascent.<br>These computers continuously calculate the rocket’s position, speed, and orientation. The system uses that data to determine how to keep the rocket on its planned trajectory and to then command the SLS’s engines and actuators to steer the vehicle or physically move engine nozzles and control surfaces. The components permit the SLS to counteract winds, engine variations, and other disturbances during ascent. And they perform vehicle health monitoring and fault management, automatically adjusting control responses or triggering protective actions.<br>VxWorks is the foundational real-time operating system (RTOS) on which the applications calculate trajectories, monitor control systems, and verify equipment status. The SLS core stage runs VxWorks 653, a DO-178C/ARINC 653 partitioned RTOS. These standards apply to commercial aviation as well.<br>Orion crew vehicle avionics<br>While it’s easy to think of Artemis and other space missions in hardware terms, the hardware is controlled by a huge amount of software. One key part of it is NASA’s core Flight System (cFS), an open source flight software framework that has powered more than 40 NASA missions. cFS enables reuse, rapid development, and portability through its dynamic runtime environment, layered architecture, and component-based design.<br>The Orion crew vehicle’s avionics are the integrated electronics and software systems that control, monitor, and manage the spacecraft. Orion’s avionics system consists of seven main subsystems that together function as the spacecraft’s brain and nervous system.<br>VxWorks, which is used in cFS, enabled NASA and its contractors to design applications such as flight path software.<br>Orion Backup Flight Software<br>The Orion Backup Flight Software (BFS) is an independent, simplified version of Orion’s flight control software, designed to take over if the primary flight software fails. Its purpose is to ensure crew safety by maintaining basic spacecraft control and enabling a safe mission continuation or return to Earth.<br>Orion’s Primary Flight Software (PFS) handles complex guidance, navigation, control, system management, and crew interface functions. The BFS runs in parallel on separate processors, constantly monitoring spacecraft...