Swedish Space Corporation Launches with Helix Core

The Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), headquartered in Sweden, provides technology and services to manage advanced space projects. The SSC Science Services team uses Helix Core to support monthly release cycles for their applications. Perforce’s version control helps the team store artifacts and separate their builds.

Why is Perforce So Important at SSC?

• Ability to integrate well
• Easy branching and merging
• Distributed version control

SCC's Global Development

The SSC works with organizations including ESA (European Space Agency), CNES (France), the DLR (Germany), JAXA (Japan) and NASA. The Science Services division launches sounding rockets and stratospheric balloons from the Esrange Space Center in Sweden.

To provide a sense of the scale of the organization’s work, in 2015 they launched more than ten rockets. The stratospheric balloons are also critical to the company’s success. These high-altitude balloons need to be able to lift payloads of several tons up to a 40 km altitude. To analyze atmospheric factors, SCC employs a variety of software solutions.

Ground Control to Helix Core

Software is at the heart of the work carried out by the SSC’s Sciences Services team. It helps the team ensure reliable, predictable, and safe rocket and balloon launches. The SSC Science Services team develops and delivers software to ground control. This helps them analyze conditions and oversee launches.

Johan Nilsson, Systems Engineer with the Science Services team, provides an example: “One of the most recent projects has been ‘wind-weighting,’ which is all about the accurate assessment of the impact of current wind conditions to reliably predict the best launch direction for a sounding rocket.”

Searching for a Reliable and Predictable Solution

After a thorough evaluation of available SCM tools, the scientists at SCC selected Helix Core. Perforce’s solution provided many benefits for the team including:

• Ability to integrate well into a variety of environments, including OpenVMS, Windows, and Linux
• Stability and speed
• Simple administration
• Unparalleled tech support
• Easier branching and merging
• Enhanced visibility into the change history

Over the years, requirements at SSC have expanded and Helix Core adoption has grown within the organization.

Perforce Integrations in Action

Helix Core is used by a 10-strong team of developers at SSC Science Services. The team applies continuous integration practices for many applications, including its wind-weighting application.

A serious advantage with Helix Core is the seamless integration with Eclipse, Visual Studio, MSBuild, Jenkins, and Jira for bug-tracking. Developers use these tools daily to help them stay on track and meet production deadlines. Recently, the team has started using Helix Core to support distributed teams. According to Nilsson: "We needed support when working offline. It’s pretty early days for our use of DVCS but I like it and also find it the easiest way to set up workspaces.”

To Infinity and Beyond

Perforce enables the Science Services team the ability to deliver complex software to support “mission-critical” SCC projects. The features within Helix Core support efficient collaboration between team members with flexible, centralized and distributed functionality. This helps the team to meet deadlines and project goals.

“We’ve not had any performance problems. The software from Perforce is very stable – our Helix Core server hasn’t experienced a crash since its introduction here 12 years ago.”