NASA Open-Sourcing Space Mission Software

NASA scientists plan to announce a new open-source project this month called CosmosCode -- it's aimed at recruiting volunteers to write code for live space missions, Wired News has learned.

The program was launched quietly last year under NASA's CoLab entrepreneur outreach program, created by Robert Schingler, 28, and Jessy Cowan-Sharp, 25, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Members of the CosmosCode group have been meeting in Second Life and will open the program to the public in the coming weeks, organizers said.

"NASA is recognizing the value of free and open-source software in other sectors," said Cowan-Sharp, a contractor at NASA Ames in Mountain View, California. "CosmosCode is going one step further by allowing NASA scientists to begin a software project in the public domain, leveraging the true value of open-source software by creating an active community of volunteers."