As the first part of a series, [George Emad] takes us through a few examples of the Linux operating system being used in spacecraft. These range from SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to everyone’s favorite Martian helicopter. An interesting aspect is that the freshest Linux kernel isn’t necessarily onboard, as stability is far more important than having the latest whizzbang features. This is why SpaceX uses Linux kernel 3.2 (with real-time patches) on the primary flight computers of both Dragon and its rockets (Falcon 9 and Starship).
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://hackaday.com/2024/02/10/the-usage-of-embedded-linux-in-spacecraft/