ESSPASE: European Space Software Product Assurance Support Environment

Abstract

The European Space Agency is pursuing a programme, the European Space Software Product Assurance Support Environment (ESSPASE), to be developed along with the European Space Software Development Environment (ESSDE), with the objective of a Software Development Environment Reference Facility and an Operational Data Repository to support all activities concerning Software Development and Product Assurance in space projects as envisaged by the ESA Standards. Currently, the ESSPASE project is in the Architectural Design Phase. This paper highlights the major functionalities offered by ESSPASE (a synthesis of more than 900 requirements) and focuses on Ada development and the most advanced and novel Software Product Assurance techniques and tools. Moreover, the paper addresses also the problem of designing such as open architecture in the context of the strong integration with the ESSDE within an overall strategy of Process Centered Software Development Environment fully supporting the software production process enforced by the ESA PSS-05 (ESA Software Engineering Standards) and PSS-01-21 (ESA Software Product Assurance Requirements) standards.