Juice: OpenProject on the way to Europa
Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is considered the most promising candidate for extraterrestrial life in the solar system. Thanks to a space company from Bremen, OpenProject is also on board.
Image source: Juice Website - https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Juice
ESA is currently one step ahead of NASA in the race to Europa: When the American scientists launched their Jupiter mission “Europa Clipper” mid of October, an ESA Europa mission will already have been underway for a year and a half - also with the help of OpenProject.
Under the name JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer), the European Space Agency and its partners want to explore the gas giant’s icy moons, above all Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.
Searching for life
On Europa in particular, scientists repeatedly believe there is a good chance of encountering extraterrestrial life and finding conditions that would enable humans to create permanent space stations.
Europa has repeatedly given rise to speculation in the past, from science fiction literature to film classics such as “2001” or the found-footage thriller “Europa Report”. But in reality, it is likely to be far more difficult to find traces of life - and that is why the two Europa missions are considered milestones with numerous high-end instruments and experiments and open source software on board.
JUICE will fly past the moons 35 times, investigating aspects such as their geological activity, magnetic fields and the large oceans beneath the ice. It is part of a larger mission that ranges over a total of 20 years, where probes will fly to Jupiter, land on Europa, melt the ice layer and explore the ocean beneath – the latter is the focus of the TRIPLE project. Testing for this mission is already being startet: End of 2026 scientists from the German Antarctic station will be drilling into the water under the ice sheet and taking a close look at it.
Image source: TRIPLE project - https://triple-project.net/, Credits: Maximilian Nitsch/RWTH Aachen University
The products of DSI Aerospace from Bremen, a long-standing OpenProject customer, play an important role in all these plans: DSI develops, organizes and builds critical hardware such as storage units Solid State Mass Memory in the CDMS (Command and Data Management Subsystem), i.e. the system that loads data from various storage media and prepares and monitors it for the downlink to Earth.
“Building the central mass storage facility for ESA’s Juice mission was a great challenge and very exciting, as the deadline for completing the work was determined by very strict launch requirements. Finally, it was very impressive to see the launch of the satellite, which only had an 8-second launch window.”
DSI ranks “among the top 3 in the world” for mass storage units for space travel (and space electronics in general). The company builds flash boards with two or three boards and has self-developed algorithms and cryptography for data integrity at the start.
However, what the Bremen-based company does is not limited to data storage. AI-supported flood protection is designed to help prevent catastrophic flooding, and scientific studies like „Dr. Beat“ are being developed for and tested on the International Space Station (ISS). The sensor system consists of next-generation wearables, is integrated into a T-shirt, and can monitor the heart function of astronauts in zero gravity with the help of ballistocardiography (BCG). Dr. Beat measures bodily functions over long periods of time, uses extreme sensor miniaturization and remains absolutely user-friendly - simply as a T-shirt for everyday use. Astronaut legends such as Matthias Maurer and Samantha Cristoforetti have worn the DSI T-shirts and made their data available.
Image source: DR.BEAT DSI Aerospace - https://www.dsi.space/dr-beat/
For managing its high-tech projects, DSI uses the power of open source software, specifically OpenProject. Konstantin Geißinger, Deputy Head of RND (Research and Development) and Marketing: “We also use Open Project in research, for example for disaster prevention in the Harz Mountains or for the Triple Project. We create an individual project for each study and use it for all work planning and organization and controlling.”
The decision in favor of the open source software OpenProject was an easy one: cloud solutions were out of the question for DSI, and there were also functional reasons. However, data protection, security and reliability played the most important role. Even though DSI itself has not much to patent, it prefers on-premise solutions.
The decisive factor for OpenProject was also the in-depth, reliable configurability, which makes the software stand out from the market in terms of usability and transparency. This also includes the fact that it is always possible to work transparently on the roadmap and give feedback together with the developers of the software - something that is not possible with all proprietary manufacturers.
More than 16 studies from the Aerospace sector
There are currently around 16 studies running at DSI, mostly in the aerospace context. All employees in the research and development department, i.e. one in four at the three DSI sites, use OpenProject on a daily basis. According to Geißinger, this has made collaboration much easier, “work and coordination is much more efficient, you now have a good overview at all times, the tool is intuitive, flexibly configurable and easy to use”.
DSI operates an Ubuntu instance for OpenProject, with one of the 14 developers taking care of the necessary updates and a backup once a week. Geißinger also sees the particular advantages of the open source model as “the high sense of security, because anyone can view the code at any time, but also the community concept and the flexible adaptability, which is typical of open source”. OpenProject is used to plan studies, define work packages, and assign tasks. Time planning takes place - also collaboratively - in Gantt charts, project lists are used to create overviews for the individual studies, all features that are also used for clear resource evaluation. DSI also actively uses meetings in OpenProject, and agile boards are used from teams for internal projects.
OpenProject is used even more extensively in DSI’s marketing department. The team uses sub-projects, work packages, e.g. for to-do lists, boards and team planner for its own projects. For detailed planning with its own, “space-specific” types (“levels” that range from internal to external, for example), there are both effort estimates and insights for controlling, which can quickly create forecasts from the resource views. “Every employee can always see who is assigned to which tasks, which is very helpful, and the presentation is appealing and intuitive, which is a pleasure to work with,” says Geißinger.
OpenProject on board
DSI Aerospace uses OpenProject successfully for the planning and execution its various studies, including studies for space missions such as the ESA JUICE mission. OpenProject enables DSI to plan and execute projects efficiently thanks to intuitive, flexible and transparent features that can be individually customized. The security advantages guaranteed by the on-premise use and the open source philosophy are particularly noteworthy. In research, development and marketing, OpenProject facilitates planning and collaboration and offers clear project management, which has led to a significant increase in efficiency at DSI.
The OpenProject team is keeping its fingers crossed for these exciting endeavors.
