De-risk the program. Ship on schedule.
Predictable cost. Direct engineering support. The command & control platform quietly powering 50+ aerospace missions — without forcing your engineers into someone else's workflow.
Two decades of continuous evolution. Fifty-plus missions in flight. One platform your engineers already want to use.
Where hardware programs go sideways.
The six failure modes we see most often on hardware programs — and how COSMOS retires each one.
Schedule slip from an in-house C2 build that's always 'three months out.'
First packet flowing the day COSMOS lands on a workstation. Hardware-team velocity stops being blocked by software.
Per-seat, per-node, per-network license math that punishes scale.
Program-priced. Add operators, ground stations, or missions without re-negotiating the contract.
Tribal knowledge that walks out the door with every senior engineer.
Public docs, a real training catalog, and a community. New hires are productive in weeks, not quarters.
Vendor lock-in with no exit if the relationship sours.
Core is open-source under the OpenC3 Builder's License. You always have an exit. You won't want one.
Audit, accreditation, and classified deployment surprises late in the program.
SSO, RBAC, encryption, audit trails, air-gap-ready. Compliance is a checkbox, not a re-architecture.
Each program reinvents the same dashboards, scripts, and procedures.
One platform across the portfolio. Configurations, plugins, and operators move between programs.
Cost delta console.
A back-of-envelope comparison most programs land on after they price out an internal effort.
Two decades. Fifty-plus missions. Zero rewrites.
COSMOS didn't come out of a pitch deck. It came out of a satellite integration lab in 2004 and has been running on real hardware ever since — from CubeSats in universities to primes flying classified payloads.
- 2004Ball Aerospace origin
COSMOS lineage begins as an internal spacecraft I&T framework.
- 2014Open-sourced
Released to the community. Adoption spreads across primes, startups, and universities.
- 2022OpenC3 founded
The original authors form OpenC3 to steward the platform and ship Enterprise.
- 2024COSMOS v5 → v7
Kubernetes-native architecture, plugin ecosystem, SSO/RBAC, air-gap install.
- 202650+ missions
Flying on satellites, launch vehicles, drones, and ground systems across the industry.
Built to slide through your contracts shop.
OpenC3 Builder's License
Permissive use for non-commercial and small-team production. Enterprise license adds support, SLAs, and indemnification.
Support & SLAs
24/7 on-call, named engineering contact, response targets that pass an audit.
Flexible vehicles
Direct, subcontract, GSA-friendly. Annual or multi-year, with optional services bundled.
Run it where your security posture requires.
On-prem / air-gap
Inside your SCIF or program lab. No outbound calls. Updates ship as signed artifacts.
Hybrid
Operators on-prem, ground stations in cloud, bridged over a hardened tunnel.
Cloud
Reference deployments for AWS, Azure, and GCP — including GovCloud / IL5 patterns.
What lands on your program on day one.
Direct Engineer Access
Get access directly to the engineers who build COSMOS
24/7 on-call
Response SLAs that hold up in an audit.
Signed release artifacts
SBOMs and cryptographic signatures on every build.
Roadmap access
See what's coming. Influence what ships next.
Quarterly reviews
Program-level check-ins with the founders.
Indemnification
Contractual protection for enterprise deployments.
The questions your team will ask.
What does the license actually permit?+
Can we deploy in an air-gapped or classified environment?+
What happens if we want to leave?+
How do you price?+
Do you provide implementation services?+
Bring us in for a briefing.
60 minutes with your program leadership and one of our founders. We'll walk your scenario, pressure-test the assumptions, and tell you straight if COSMOS is a fit.