How A Programmer Got Doom To Run On A Space Satellite And What Happened Next

ESA

Follow ZDNET: Add america arsenic a preferred source on Google.

ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

• A hacker pinch immoderate thief from nan ESA sewage Doom to tally connected a satellite.
• This was built connected years of open-source Doom being ported to each computing instrumentality you tin conceive of. 
• The research showed disconnected open-source software's adaptability

LONDON: Say it pinch me, opportunity it loud. "Doom successful Space!" You tin almost perceive nan reverb, can't you? Doom, nan 1993 crippled that was erstwhile installed connected much computers than Windows, is celebrated for respective reasons, including jump-starting nan first-person shooter genre and moving connected beautiful overmuch every computing level you tin imagine. This includes everything from lawnmowers to iPods to supercomputers. There are moreover efforts afoot to get Doom to tally connected quantum computers.

Recently, Doom moved to space, nan last frontier.

Also: Best VPN services: Our apical picks for velocity and security

Ólafur Waage, a elder package developer from Iceland who now useful successful Norway, explained astatine Ubuntu Summit 25.10 really he, a self-described "professional keyboard typist" and shaper of funny videos, ended up making what is possibly nan game's astir outlandish larboard yet: Doom moving connected a existent outer successful orbit, nan European Space Agency (ESA) OPS-SAT satellite.

OPS-SAT, a "flying laboratory" for testing caller onboard computing techniques, was equipped pinch an experimental machine astir 10 times much powerful than nan norm for spacecraft. Waag explained, "OPS-SAT was nan first of its kind, devoted to demonstrating drastically improved ngo power capabilities erstwhile satellites tin alert much powerful onboard computers. The constituent was to break nan curse of being excessively risk-averse pinch multi-million-dollar spacecraft." (The outer was decommissioned successful 2024.)

Doom has been open-sourced since 1997. A fewer weeks later, I began playing connected Linux. It's a earthy prime for porting it to a spacecraft, arsenic its C codification is simple. 

Running Doom successful orbit was partially a situation of portability and partially a situation of nan limitations of abstraction hardware and ngo control. The on-board ARM dual-core Cortex-A9 processor, while basking worldly for space computing hardware (which tends to beryllium low-powered and radiation-hardened), was slow moreover by Earth-bound standards. 

Waage chose Chocolate Doom 2.3, a celebrated open-source type of Doom, for its compatibility pinch nan Ubuntu 18.04 Long Term Support (LTS) distro, which was already moving connected OPS-SAT. Besides, Waage noted, "We picked Chocolate Doom 2.3 because of nan libraries disposable for 18.04 -- that was nan past 1 that would really build.

Updating package successful orbit is highly difficult, truthful comparatively small codification would person to beryllium uploaded. As Waage said, "Doom is comparatively straightforward C pinch a fewer outer dependencies." In different words, it's easy to port. 

Also: AI could thief humans copilot abstraction missions 1 day, researchers find

To commencement with, Waage ran nan abstraction Doom connected nan aforesaid hardware that was successful orbit connected nan ground. It took a small fine-tuning, but it worked well. Then, a fewer days aft Christmas 2019, he successfully ran Doom connected nan satellite. War successful abstraction and bad will to demons.

Of course, immoderate things had to alteration from your accustomed Doom experience. For 1 thing, location were nary graphics connected nan satellite. I mean, it's not a gaming console successful space. So, each nan graphics had to beryllium done successful software. Even aft optimization, nan framework complaint was thing to constitute location about. But, hey, it was amended than playing Doom successful SQL.

The research relied heavy connected pre-recorded demo files, which enabled abstraction Doom to play backmost complete levels utilizing deterministic input sequences. This ensured that immoderate deviation caused by stray radiation (bit flips) could beryllium detected, since nan game's output would not lucifer nan expected results. This attack had nan added use of getting immoderate existent subject successful nan experiment. "The thought was to tally arsenic galore demo files arsenic possible, comparing output from abstraction and from Earth," recounted Waage.

Also: Your Netflix conscionable sewage a free NASA upgrade - beaming spacewalks consecutive to your surviving room

Waage described nan process: "We made nan RNG (Random Number) array immense and checked if azygous events could effect gameplay. In simulation, yes; successful space, unfortunately, no. But that was our existent scheme for nan project; sometimes experiments don't work, but that's why OPS-SAT existed."

The only motion that Doom was moving successful abstraction astatine first was a lone log entry. So, nan squad utilized nan satellite's camera to threat real-time images of nan Earth, past swapped Doom's Mars skybox for existent outer photos. "The thought was to return a screenshot from nan outer and usage that arsenic nan sky, each rendered successful package utilizing nan game's restricted 256-color palette," explained Waage. 

Even this posed unexpected difficulties: "Trying to tie each of these beautiful colors pinch those colors," said Waage, "it's astir apt not going to activity correct off. But we tried gradient tests, NASA demo photos. It took rather a spot of tweaking." Eventually, alternatively of a imagination Mars arsenic nan entity background, they sewage a good-looking, existent Earth successful nan game's sky.

The crippled itself ran flawlessly. After all, Waage said, "It ran beautifully. It's connected Ubuntu." 

So, why do this? Well, first, because we tin and it's cool. 

Also: 6 reasons why I've stuck pinch Ubuntu-based Linux distros for nan past 20 years

You want a amended reason? OK, Waage explained that specified projects aren't conscionable for nosy -- they show nan adaptability of open-source software, abstraction hardware, and nan world collaboration driving modern research. OPS-SAT's ngo was specifically to little nan barriers for experimenting successful orbit, enabling imaginative crossovers betwixt package engineering and abstraction science.

As Waage summed up: "The ngo is to make it easy for anyone to propose and tally innovative experiments. Running Doom whitethorn look trivial, but it proves our infrastructure and builds world liking for early missions."

Since then, nan Polish institution KP Labs has besides successfully tally Doom connected its Intuition-1 satellite. This utilized nan company's Leopard Data Processing Unit to tally Doom while simultaneously capturing hyperspectral images of Earth.

Looking ahead, there's different OPS-SAT VOLT outer motorboat scheduled for adjacent year. That outer is focused connected quantum communications. 

Also: The champion outer phones: Expert tested and reviewed

Nevertheless, Waage hopes to larboard Doom to it to execute caller heights. Doom's orbital travel continues to animate world-class engineering and net civilization alike. It's besides still conscionable a heck of a batch of nosy to play if you bask immoderate bully old-fashioned mindless demon blasting.  

Get nan biggest stories successful tech each Friday pinch ZDNET's Week successful Review newsletter.