JavaScript used in SpaceX🚀🚀
There’s no denying that JavaScript is everywhere, but just how the one of the world’s largest space organization using JavaScript?
Q. What is JavaScript?
-> JavaScript is a client-side programming language which helps web developer to do Web Application Development and make dynamic and interactive web pages by implementing custom client-side scripts. Developers can also use cross-platform runtime engines like Node.js to write server-side code in JavaScript.
Q. What is Node.js?
Node.js is an framework of “JavaScript” and an open source technology that combines the power of Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine with low-level system functions like network and file operations. Using Node.js, developers can build JavaScript applications outside of the web browser.
It may not sound revolutionary now, but back in 2009 this was a huge step forward. Before that, the only place that you could run JavaScript programs was the browser. It was one of the big limitations that kept JavaScript from evolving, and limited it to being a language for front-end interactions in the browser.
With Node.js, this problem was eliminated, and you could run JS programs anywhere. You could finally use JavaScript for both client and server.
Two revolutionary things happened after that:
- JS exploded in popularity as developers started using it to build full applications
- The web finally became a true medium of real-time, two-way communication
SpaceX used JavaScript and Node.js in Dragon Flight.
Node.js made its way into space as the technology for displaying data on screens in SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. So we can confidently say that it’s space-ready! Plus, the official Node.js blog states that Node can be used for all kinds of applications, and it “empowers everyone from hobbyists to the largest enterprise teams to bring their dreams to life faster than ever before.”
SpaceX’s historic CrewDragon has successfully launched into space on Saturday the 30th of May. The whole world had to hold their breath while watching the iconic moment of humanity coming into the new are of space flights.
The Crew Dragon launched astronauts from the United States for the first time since the last Shuttle flight in 2011. However, the shuttle itself completely differs from what we have ever had in the past.
Spaceflight had always been the fundamental goal for his pioneering company SpaceX.
-Elon Musk
The whole world is buzzing about the successful launch of the astronauts from their homeland. All the people involved in it, and especially software engineers became heroes for the United States. And as a team of software engineers ourselves, we are especially proud of one of them, who is Ukrainian — Oleksii Pakhunov, who played an important role in the software development of SpaceX projects.
Still, the most interesting part that caught our eyes is the UI part of the spaceships. If you are not aware of the Crew Dragon spaceship’s user interface, the pilots are using three large touchscreen panels, instead of a famous maze of manual controls.
Surprisingly, the famous touchscreen interface is running on Chromium and is being fully written on JavaScript. JavaScript is a scripting language, internally designed to be used to create and control dynamic website content, i.e. The answer of SpaceX engineers has surprised many of the users, as no one expected to see a web development technology running on a spaceship in an open space.
The development team has used a self-written JavaScript library for the creation of UI components on the touchscreen. The engineers have designated that their team uses open-source libraries only as a last resort in case of any urgent needs, because of the quality control considerations.
This is the library used by SpaceX
https://www.npmjs.com/package/spacex-nodejs
Who would have thought, that SpaceX rockets fly with the software, that you can find on your Android phone? The SpaceX engineers have shown to the rest of the world that a web application, which was written in JavaScript and HTML, just like millions of websites here, on our Earth, can successfully run in an open space, showing the astronauts what they need to see while piloting a spacecraft.
That is clear evidence that you can use JavaScript to run important software on which people’s lives highly depend. This brings us to a certainty that there is no chance that JavaScript will lose its position as the most used programming language in the world.
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