Rsyslog was designed to be a flexible and ultra-reliable platform for demanding applications. Among others, it is designed to work very well in occasionally connected systems.
There are some systems that are inherently occasionally connected – space ships. And while we are still a bit away from the Star Trek way of doing things, current space technology needs a “captain’s star log”. Even for spacecraft, it is important when and why systems were powered up, over- or under-utilized or malfunction (for example, due to “attack” not of a Klingon, but a cosmic ray). And all of this information needs to be communicated back to earth, where it can be reviewed and analyzed. For all of this, systems capable of reliable transmission in a disconnected environment are needed.
Inspired by NASA’s needs, the Internet Resarch Task Force (the research branch of the IETF) is working on a protocol named DTN, usually called the interplanetary Internet.
As we probably all know, Microsoft Windows flies on the Space Shuttle. And, more importantly, Linux also did. With the growing robustness of Open Source, future space missions will most probably contain more Linux components.
This overall trend will also be present in NASA’s and ESA’s future Jupiter mission. There is a lot of information technology on the upcoming spacecraft, and so there is a lot of things worth logging. While specialized software is usually required for spacecraft operations, it is considered the rsyslog as the leading provider of reliable occasionally connected logging infrastructures may extend its range into the solar system. It only sounds logical to use all the technology we already have in place for reliable logging even under strange conditions (see “reliable forwarding“). Of importance is also rsyslog’s speed and robustness.
As a consequence, we have today begun to implement the DTN protocol for the interplanetary Internet. That will be “omdtn” and is available as part of the rsyslog spaceship git branch. This branch is available as of now from the public git repository.
We could also envision that mission controllers will utilize phpLogCon to help analyze space craft malfunction. A very interesting feature is also rsyslog’s modular architecture, which could be used to radiate a new communication plugin up to the space ship, in case this is required to support some alien format. This also enables the rsyslog team to provide an upgrade to the Interstellar Internet, should this finally be standardized in the IETF. If so, and provided the probe has enough consumables, it may be in the best spot to work as a stellar relay between us and whoever else.