INPE — Satellite Communication Systems
Role
Research Fellow at INPE — Brazil’s National Space Research Institute, the government agency responsible for the country’s space program, satellite operations, and Earth observation systems. INPE operates Brazil’s fleet of Earth observation and data collection satellites and runs one of the largest weather forecasting centers in the Southern Hemisphere.
The challenge
Build reliable Linux kernel drivers for satellite communication testing hardware — software that interfaces directly with physical devices transmitting and receiving data from orbit. Zero room for ambiguity. A misinterpreted signal specification means corrupted telemetry data.
What I built
- 3 Linux kernel drivers for satellite communication testing hardware, achieving 99.5% accuracy in signal processing and validation
- Low-level C code interfacing directly with custom hardware boards used in satellite ground station testing
- Diagnostic and calibration tools for the communication testing pipeline
- Ranked 1st among 40 research fellows — earned distinction from an ITA-trained professor (ITA is Brazil’s equivalent of MIT for aerospace engineering)
Where specs became non-negotiable
At INPE, every piece of hardware has a specification document before anyone writes a single line of code. The communication protocols between ground stations and satellites are defined to the bit level. You don’t interpret — you implement exactly what the spec says.
This was my first exposure to specification-driven thinking at a systems level. When your code controls hardware talking to satellites, you don’t start with code — you start with the spec.
What I learned
I was 19, earning ~$50/month, walking 12km some days to get to the lab. But INPE gave me something no salary could buy: the understanding that rigorous specification is not bureaucracy — it’s engineering discipline.
25 years later, the principle is the same. Whether it’s satellite hardware or AI agents, the quality of your specification determines the quality of your output. INPE planted the seed. Spec Driven Development is the methodology that grew from it.