# nasa/cFS

The Core Flight System (cFS)

Repository: https://github.com/nasa/cFS
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/cfs
Language: C
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-08-26T16:41:44+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 90/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 72, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3352, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 111, "gap_med": 53.5, "n_releases_24m": 3}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1472, forks 383 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:49.412598+00:00)

## What it is
NASA's Core Flight System (cFS) is a generic flight software architecture framework written in C, used on spacecraft ranging from flagship and human-rated missions to cubesats and Raspberry Pi. This repository is a bundle of submodules (cFE, OSAL, PSP, and example apps) that builds and executes a reference system for command ingest and telemetry output.

## Use cases
- build flight software for a cubesat
- run cFS on a Raspberry Pi for embedded experiments
- send commands and receive telemetry from a cFS bundle
- develop and test spacecraft applications with the cFE framework
- simulate flight software in QEMU during CI
- start a mission flight software baseline from an open-source framework

## When to choose
- you need a proven, reusable flight software architecture for a spacecraft mission
- you want an open-source starting point for cFE/OSAL/PSP-based development
- you're prototyping embedded flight software on commodity hardware like Raspberry Pi

## When to avoid
- you need a fully verified operational flight distribution out of the box
- your project requires the government-only Distro C features under a Software User Agreement
- you need extensive mission-specific verification and validation done for you

## Facets
- artifact type: framework
- maturity: stable
- function: middleware, embedded, sdk, testing
- domain: embedded-systems, developer-tools, simulation
- platform: embedded, cross-platform
- tags: flight-software, spacecraft, nasa, cfe, osal, cubesat, real-time, aerospace, linux

## Member repositories
- nasa/cFS (main) score 90

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:49.412598+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T04:34:42.573799+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/nasa/cFS (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:49.412598+00:00, sha 6ee75c130f3c)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.