An unknown company from Barcelona has become indispensable for the ESA: its software controls the Ariane 6 rocket

When Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket first passed through the atmosphere a few days ago, it was guided by software from a small Spanish company called GTD.

The company that programs European rockets. Based in Barcelona, ​​GTD is a engineering consultant specialized in critical systems that has been creating software for rockets since 2000.

It has become a benchmark in aerospace engineering and plays a key role in the development of the new Ariane 6 heavy-lift rocket, for which it has received contracts worth around 60 million euros.

40 engineers working at the heart of Ariane 6. GTD’s particularity is that it often competes against companies 5, 10 and even 100 times larger for public tenders and private contracts from the European Space Agency (ESA), the French space agency (CNES) and the rocket manufacturer ArianeGroup.

Some 40 GTD employees have been involved in the development of Ariane 6.20 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, where GTD is guaranteed to maintain its software for the entire operational life of the rocket.

Flight and ground systems. GTD has developed software for the rocket’s onboard and ground systems together with ArianeGroup. The code for the onboard segment is crucial for autonomous flight management from launch to orbit insertion.

On the Ariane 6 ground segment, GTD has led the technical and operational qualification of the launch system, which includes the safety systems (CFS), the control bench family (CBF) and the fluid interface system (IPSO) for cryogenic fluid management.

Eight control benches were used to create and integrate the different parts of the Ariane 6 rocket, six in Europe and two in Kourou. They were then integrated in Kourou using the GTD central control bench, the “brain” of the launch that has already proven its success.

Modernizing rocket communications. “The design of the previous launcher (Vega) is approximately from the year 2000, and that of Ariane 6, from 2015,” Ricardo Bennassar, director of space operations at GTD, explains to Xataka.

“Ariane 6 uses a deterministic Ethernet network, whereas previous European launchers were based on a network used in the aeronautical field (MIL-1553). This change involves a very important modification in the software architecture.”

No AI, pure determinism. “The programming language used is the same as in previous launchers, in more recent versions,” adds Bennassar. “It is the Ada language, which is very efficient in critical and deterministic environments, although nowadays it is not common for most programmers.”

There is no AI in autonomous rocket control. “Everything must be deterministic and validatable. All the important elements in a launcher must be redundant, not only in the rocket, but in all the ground systems that allow for preparation for takeoff and tracking of the launcher in flight.”

Take inspiration from other sectors to save costs. “Ground systems had to be significantly more efficient and flexible than the current ones,” explains Bennassar. “Development, maintenance and operation costs had to be reduced by at least 30%.”

“Our solution has been the innovation and technological transfer of solutions that are standard in other industrial areas to the space market, with its particular engineering processes.”

“A second challenge, which follows from the first, is cybersecurity. Using standard industrial solutions entails cybersecurity risks that did not exist when systems were developed specifically for a specific purpose.”

A successful first launch. GTD Engineers They burst with joy with the launch of Ariane 6 after eight years of work. Now the team is analysing the data to introduce improvements and solve problems, such as the failure to deorbit the second stage.

The prevailing feeling is one of optimism. “It is extraordinary that such a good performance was achieved on a particularly complex maiden flight, and that means that the work has been done well,” concludes Ricardo Bennassar.

Image | GTD, Arianespace

At Xataka | I’ve been photographing rocket launches for over 15 years, only Starship has melted my camera