NASA goes open source as it seeks volunteers to code space missions

NASA plans to recruit volunteers to write code for space missions with a new open source program called CosmosCode, Wired reports.

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.

"CosmosCode is ... 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," said Cowan-Sharp, a NASA contractor.

Even at NASA, a military creation that has always done its science in a top-down manner, a shift is occurring towards openness and transparency. CosmosCode is one small reflection of how NASA is changing, Wired says. It's part of the CoLab effort, in which the public is enlisted to help with engineering project. And code from old projects is being released as open source.

"CoLab is building an infrastructure to encourage and facilitate direct participation from the talented and interested public in NASA's projects and programs," said Schingler, the NASA CoLab project manager.

NASA has already released more than 20 open-source software titles, including World Wind, a 3-D virtual globe similar to Google Earth, and Vision Workbench, a framework for computer vision applications.

The effort is already getting some big names in open source to pitch in. After all, what's cooler than working on a space mission?

"CosmosCode certainly could be a big deal," said David Boswell, a CoLab volunteer and co-founder of mozdev.org. "NASA has a lot of software already released under their NASA Open Source Agreement license and there are other developers outside of NASA interested in working on space software projects."