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NASA chose an IBM Rational systems development solution

When the Webb Telescope takes off for its perch in space, a million miles
away, it will be operated by some 200,000 lines of software code. One of its
goals will be to search for faint signs of infrared light to help us better understand
the origins of the universe. Since a system failure would involve a
space shuttle mission to repair, the software needs to be right the first time.
NASA chose an IBM Rational systems development solution to be used by its
three international space agency partners in building the Telescope. The solution
will act as a blueprint for the entire multi-decade project, allowing different
development organizations to “drag and drop” software code directly
into the blueprint, where it is then automatically populated across the entire
project. Such modeling can accelerate software development by almost 30
percent, with quality checks built in at every step.
It’s a long way from the development of the Hubble Telescope nearly 20
years ago. Hubble was a mix of proprietary applications. When a fix was
needed, engineers had to identify not only which software application would
solve the problem, but sometimes track down the very same developer who
wrote the original code years earlier.

Release link: http://www.ibm.com/ibm/ideasfromibm/us/nasa/032607/index.html?sa_campaign=message/ideas/leadspace/all/telescopeflash