Formal Approach for the Verification of Onboard Autonomous Functions in Observation Satellites

Abstract: We propose a new approach for modelling the functional behaviour of an Earth observation satellite. We leverage this approach in order to develop a safety critical software, a "telecommand verifier", that is in charge of checking onboard whether a sequence of instructions is safe for execution. This new service is needed in order to add more autonomy to satellites. To do so, we propose a new Domain Specific Modelling Language and the toolchain required for integration into an embedded software. This framework is based on the composition of deterministic finite state machines with safety conditions , timeouts, and transitions that accept durations as a parameter. It is able to generate code in the synchronous programming language Lustre from a high-level specification of the satellite. This gives a formal way to derive an event-based algorithm simulating the execution of telecommand sequence and, thereupon, a provably correct onboard verifier.