Matthias Endler

It's Rust in Production, a podcast about companies who use Rust to shape the future of infrastructure.

My name is Matthias Entler from Corot, and today we talk to Sebastian Scholz from GammaSpace about controlling solar sails and satellites with Rust.

Sebastian, thanks very much for taking the time for the interview today.

Can you say a few words about yourself and about Gamma?

Now, not everyone might be familiar what a solar sail is.

Can you describe the principle behind it?

Unless you're too far away from the sun.

It's not a physics podcast, but at the same time, I'm always curious about space.

It's a thing that's fascinated me since I was a child.

And a lot of people, they requested an episode with you and with the project that you do, which we're here to talk about, because you also happen to use Rust.

Now, isn't it extremely risky to use Rust for such a mission?

You don't really have that many tries anyway.

It's not like redeploying a backend or so.

And before we talk about the onboard data handling system, what do you define as new space and what are maybe other companies in that realm?

some of the more common languages like C, C++, or maybe even Ada for the test mission for Gamma Alpha.

But you chose Rust.

Why?

I know that you were not there, but maybe you talked to them about it.

Why did they choose it?

How can I imagine day-to-day at Gamma?