When we talk about national space infrastructure, we talk about rockets, launch pads and ground stations. We invest billions in the vehicles that carry astronauts to the moon and the telescopes that peer to the edge of the universe. But we rarely talk about the software that makes all of it work. That is a blind spot \u2014 and in an era of intensifying competition in space, it is one we can no longer afford.<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s Core Flight System (cFS) is an open-source flight software framework that quietly powers some of the most ambitious space missions ever attempted. Gateway. Orion. The Human Landing System. The Lunar Terrain Vehicle. Mars Sample Return. Dozens of Earth science satellites. And increasingly, systems that I cannot discuss in detail but that are critical to our national security. cFS runs beneath all of them, largely invisible, doing exactly what good infrastructure is supposed to do: working so reliably that nobody notices it is there.The cFS community has done the hard work of building a global flight software standard \u2014 now the space industry, defense partners, and policymakers must step forward to sustain it.<\/p>\n
Last month, more than 360 aerospace professionals came to Tysons Corner, Virginia, for the annual cFS Symposium. A historic winter storm closed roads, grounded flights and shuttered federal offices across the Washington region. They came anyway.<\/p>\n
That detail matters. It tells you something about what this community understands that the broader policy conversation has not yet fully absorbed: that software is not a supporting element of the space enterprise. It is a space enterprise. Every rocket that flies, every satellite that operates, every astronaut who travels beyond low Earth orbit depends on software to survive. The people who build and maintain that software \u2014 across NASA, the Department of Defense, commercial industry, universities and partner nations \u2014 know this in their bones.<\/p>\n
The Department of Defense sent representatives from the U.S. Space Force, DARPA, NRO, NRL and Sandia National Laboratories. They attended a classified session on the third day. Fifty commercial companies were in the room. Eleven countries sent delegates. They did not come because of a conference agenda. They came because the stakes are real.<\/p>\n
What happened in Tysons Corner was a community of professionals from across the civil, commercial and defense space sectors declaring \u2014 through their presence, through a winter storm \u2014 that flight software is mission-critical infrastructure and that they are committed to it. That kind of commitment is rare. It should not be taken for granted.<\/p>\n
What this moment demands<\/p>\n
The release of cFS Draco v7.0.0 and the introduction of AerLock (available in cFS Gov) \u2014 NASA\u2019s first native spacecraft cybersecurity product \u2014 at this year\u2019s Symposium reflect a program that understands the moment it is operating in.<\/p>\n
Space is no longer a benign domain. It is contested, congested and increasingly targeted by adversaries who understand that disrupting space infrastructure is among the highest-leverage actions available to them. Cybersecurity can no longer be an afterthought bolted onto missions after the fact. It must be designed from the beginning \u2014 embedded in the software layer that every mission depends on. That is what AerLock represents. Not a product announcement. A posture shift.<\/p>\n
Draco, meanwhile, signals something equally important: that the cFS community is governing itself with the discipline and rigor of a mature operational platform \u2014 not a government research project. The retirement of constellation-based release naming in favor of standard semantic versioning is a small change with large implications. It tells every commercial company, every international partner and every defense program manager considering cFS adoption that this is a platform they can build long-term strategies around.<\/p>\n
AerLock is our acknowledgement that the threat environment has fundamentally changed. We are not hardening one mission. We are hardening the platform that every mission runs on. That is a completely different order of magnitude \u2014 and it is long overdue.<\/p>\n
Software is how we lead<\/p>\n
The United States has an extraordinary opportunity \u2014 one that will not remain open indefinitely. As space programs proliferate globally, the nation that establishes the dominant software standard for spacecraft operations gains durable influence over interoperability, mission collaboration and the norms of behavior in space for decades to come. NASA, through cFS, has built that standard. The world has begun to adopt it.<\/p>\n
But standards are not self-sustaining. They require active stewardship, sustained development and the kind of cross-sector collaboration that the 2026 Symposium demonstrated is not only possible but already well underway. The community is there. The missions are there. The national security imperative is there.<\/p>\n
What remains is the recognition \u2014 at the policy level \u2014 that software is not overhead. It is how we explore, how we operate and increasingly, how we compete. It is time the conversation about national space infrastructure reflected that reality.<\/p>\n
We did not set out to build a global standard. We set out to build reliable flight software that NASA missions could share. The fact that it has grown into something the entire space community depends on \u2014 civil, commercial, defense and international \u2014 tells you something profound about the value of open, reusable, mission-proven software. Now we have a responsibility to steward it at that level.<\/p>\n
The call: adopt, contribute, govern<\/p>\n
The cFS community is not waiting for permission. The 2026 Symposium demonstrated a level of cross-sector engagement that most government software programs never achieve. But engagement alone is not enough. What this moment calls for is a collective step forward \u2014 from participation to ownership.<\/p>\n
For industry: the path is adoption and contribution. Commercial space companies that have not yet integrated cFS into their mission software stacks should be asking why. The framework is open, battle-tested and backed by a global community. Contributing back to the platform \u2014 through code, tools and standards development \u2014 is how the commercial sector earns a seat at the governance table and shapes the software that their missions will depend on for decades.<\/p>\n
For defense and national security partners: the path is deeper integration and formal collaboration. The DoD\u2019s recognition that multiple national security space systems already run on cFS is not the end of a conversation \u2014 it is the beginning of one. A formal NASA-DoD governance framework for cFS development, with shared security requirements and joint roadmap input, would strengthen both the platform and the national security posture it supports.<\/p>\n
For international partners: the path is standardization through the consortium model. Eleven countries were represented at this year\u2019s Symposium. An international cFS consortium \u2014 with appropriate export control frameworks \u2014 would give partner nations a structured mechanism to contribute to and benefit from the platform, while reinforcing U.S. leadership in setting the global norms for spacecraft software.<\/p>\n
For NASA and the policy community: the path is recognition. Recognition that software is infrastructure. Recognition that open-source does not mean ungoverned. Recognition that the competitive advantage the United States currently holds in space software is not guaranteed \u2014 it must be actively maintained, evolved and protected.<\/p>\n
The question I am asked most often is: what does success look like for cFS? My answer is simple. Success looks like every mission that needs reliable, secure, open flight software having access to it \u2014 regardless of whether they are a NASA center, a defense program, a commercial startup, or an international partner. We are closer to that vision than most people realize. But getting all the way there requires the space community to treat software governance with the same seriousness it treats mission hardware.<\/p>\n
The people who came to Tysons Corner through a winter storm last month already know that software is how we maintain leadership over the space frontier. The missions that depend on cFS today \u2014 and the missions we have not yet imagined \u2014 are counting on the rest of us to catch up.<\/p>\n
The standard exists. The community is ready. The moment is now.<\/p>\n
Ashok Prajapati is the program manager of NASA\u2019s Core Flight System at Goddard Space Flight Center. He leads the NASA cFS Steering Committee and serves as the program\u2019s primary architect of cross-agency collaboration across NASA, DoD, industry and international partners. He also co-chairs AIAA\u2019s Aerospace Cybersecurity Working Group.<\/p>\n
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