Architecture for Verifiable Software

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Thursday, December 01 2005 Verifiable MDS Architecture (VMA) is a software architecture that facilitates the construction of highly verifiable flight software for NASA’s Mission Data System (MDS), especially for smaller missions subject to cost constraints. More specifically, the purpose served by VMA is to facilitate aggressive verification and validation of flight software while imposing a minimum of constraints on overall functionality. VMA exploits the state-based architecture of the MDS and partitions verification issues into elements susceptible to independent verification and validation, in such a manner that scaling issues are minimized, so that relatively large software systems can be aggressively verified in a cost-effective manner.

This work was done by William Reinholtz and Daniel Dvorak of Caltech for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For further information, access the Technical Support Package (TSP) free on-line at www.techbriefs.com/tsp under the Software category.

This software is available for commercial licensing. Please contact Karina Edmonds of the California Institute of Technology at (818) 393- 2827. Refer to NPO-40842.