When we talk about national space infrastructure, we talk about rockets, launch pads and ground stations. We invest billions in the vehicles that carry astronauts to the moon and the telescopes that peer to the edge of the universe. But we rarely talk about the software that makes all of it work. That is a blind spot — and in an era of intensifying competition in space, it is one we can no longer afford.

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Ashok Prajapati is the program manager of NASA's Core Flight System at Goddard Space Flight Center. He leads the NASA cFS Steering Committee and serves as the program's primary architect of cross-agency collaboration across NASA, DoD, industry and international...