Three years after its establishment, GTD GmbH has been contracted by the European Space Agency (ESA) as prime contractor for the development of a mathematical library for future space missions. GTD GmbH, which specializes in development of on-board software, has won the open competition for the contract titled “Pre-qualification of a Mathematical Library for flight Software” (AO8569) last July.Software libraries that compute mathematical functions such as square roots and logarithms are used in satellite and launcher control software. Accuracy, performance and reproducibility of the numeric results are important performance indicators for this type of libraries. The use of different mathematical libraries in simulation and production environments leads to inaccuracies during software test and simulation activities. The unification and standardization of the mathematical libraries will eliminate deviations between development stages and make the results comparable.The Agency has contracted GTD GmbH to develop a mathematical standard library to improve the performace fllight software and its validation. The library will be pre-qualified for future use in ESA projects, offering a number of advantages: compliance to the ESA-ECSS norms, defined accuracy, behaviour, and performance of the mathematical computations, practices for best use of the library to obtain accurate and reproducible results, performance-optimized implementation for SPARC V8 processors with GRFPU or Meiko FPU, qualification kit with a mathematical application to assess and benchmark the libraries function on target platforms.The Agency plans to use GTD GmbH’s library for the EUCLID space telescope mission (launch 2020) and the VEGA C launcher (first launch 2020).This contract represents an important milestone in the development of the German company (wholly owned subsidiary by GTD) based in Markdorf, near Lake Constance. “We are pleased to make such an important contribution to the state of art of European space software technology”, said Mr. Andoni Arregui, managing director of the company. German press coverage:http://www.suedkurier.de/region/bodenseekreis-oberschwaben/markdorf/Erster-ESA-Auftrag-GTD-entwickelt-Software-fuer-Raumfahrtmissionen;art372484,8841163http://www.schwaebische.de/region_artikel,-Markdorfer-Firma-GTD-erhaelt-ESA-Auftrag-_arid,10502484_toid,482.html
