Jakub Rachucki

The goal was to create an onboard computer for a suborbital rocket. The system provided a reliable and scalable solution to perform suborbital missions. It was affordable and contained a lot of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components.

I was responsible for the whole product and participated in the complete product development process, starting from the requirement formulation. I have also trade-offed the necessary system components, assessed the required time and money budgets, and handled fundraising via national, EU, and European Space Agency programs.

I had to create a team and organize a development facility. I recruited three members and equipped the laboratory. Additionally, 2-3 interns join us every year. I divided the team into hardware and software development and joined the software section while handling the team's management.

The designed system was composed of many independent modules interconnected using CAN. The software written in C++, developed using TDD, was modular and cross-platform, thanks to the generic hardware abstraction layer.

The product was a success, and the computer is now a vital part of the rocket and has already flown three times.

The amount of documentation in space projects often surpasses the written code. Throughout my career, cooperating with many companies from the aerospace sector, I've seen the practice of keeping documentation in separate doc files or spreadsheets. Providing cross-references between documents or generating a traceability matrix in this condition was a nightmare.

My last client kept documentation in Confluence, which was a great idea. It granted the possibility to link crucial data with each other. My task was to automate the generation of a traceability matrix and KPIs for my client's client. The traceability matrix maps the high-level system requirements to test results, indicating if the system conforms to the design. The KPIs show the percentage of the high-level system requirements translated to low-level ones, showing the progress of the system engineering.

I wrote a Python application that scraps data from Confluence using its REST API. I programmatically mapped acquired data and generated the traceability matrix and KPIs. My application automatically updated the Confluence page, publishing the results, saving a lot of time, and enabling monitoring of the system development.

The goal was to create a cross-platform, user-friendly solution to accelerate the work of CERN physicists. The application met its purpose by consolidating and thus reducing the complexity of the control system network.

Using CERN middleware, the application combined all the accelerators devices and data sources into one interface. The application used inheritance and polymorphism to automatically detect the data source and create an object that adapts to its specifics.

I design the software using the requirements given by my supervisor. The application was written in LabVIEW using an object-oriented approach and ActorFramework. I made the application cross-platform to make it usable to all CERN workers.

The implementation and tests took seven months. Then I was responsible for launching and promoting the application across the organization.

CERN employees adopted the application, significantly reducing the time needed for control system development.