Space Shuttle Atlantis launched today on its way to the final Hubble telescope repair mission. There's an old joke originally quipped by astronaut Wally Schirra that NASA spacecraft really is a modern marvel, especially when you consider it's built by the lowest bidders. It's the government's tight purse strings, however, that has helped open source software put its fingerprints all over the space agency.

By the time you read this, Space Shuttle Endeavour will have left the launchpad at Florida's Kennedy Space Center and will be winging its way to the International Space Station to deliver new ISS components. As millions of people around the world watch the mission unfold on live video feeds captured by NASA's Telescience Lab, Fedora will be running the servers that distribute footage to Houston's Mission Control and NASA TV. In fact, various iterations of Fedora turn up all over Kennedy Space Center, including servers that manage data processing -- and even the countdown clock.