[mek6800d2]

This Substack article should not be trusted - there are no sources given. I google'd each of the 4 example satellites and "netbsd" and the only results were the Substack article and people referencing the article. NetBSD may have been used in ground systems, but (i) that would have been a non-story and (ii) I couldn't find any evidence of that, so I wonder where the author picked up this information.

I am most familiar with SAMPEX, which was launched in 1992. The initial release of NetBSD, version 0.8, was in 1993 according to Wikipedia. Okay, the article says the project "transitioned" to NetBSD in the "extended mission". Okay, maybe in the 2000s, let's say they decided to replace the original OS/real-time-executive on a working spacecraft with a new OS. So you abruptly replace the old OS/RTE-based flight software with software based on a new OS/RTE. (You don't gradually transition from one OS/RTE to another.) I don't buy it. On a working spacecraft? No.

(I realize the article was probably AI-generated.)