Doom's Cosmic Comeback: Programmer Successfully Runs Classic Shooter on ESA Satellite

Doom Enters Orbit: Programmer Runs Classic Shooter on ESA Satellite

The legend of Doom's ubiquitous presence continues to grow, this time reaching the ultimate frontier: space. In a remarkable feat of technical ingenuity, Icelandic programmer Ólafur Vaage, now based in Norway, alongside colleague Georges Labrèche and the European Space Agency (ESA), successfully launched the iconic 1993 first-person shooter onto a genuine ESA satellite. This audacious experiment, far from being an insurmountable challenge, underscores the enduring adaptability of classic gaming software.

A "Flying Laboratory" Becomes a Gaming Arena

The unconventional gaming session took place aboard OPS-SAT, an ESA "flying laboratory" specifically designed for testing novel data processing techniques in the harsh environment of space. Vaage revealed at the Ubuntu 25.10 summit that the satellite is equipped with an experimental computer boasting roughly ten times the processing power of standard space systems. It was on this advanced, yet orbital-grade, hardware that Vaage set his sights on bringing Doom to life.

With Doom's source code publicly available since 1997, adapting it for the celestial realm was an achievable goal. Vaage opted for Chocolate Doom 2.3, a version known for its compatibility with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, the operating system powering the OPS-SAT satellite. "It could be compiled even on space hardware – a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9, which by terrestrial standards is long obsolete, but for orbit, it's considered quite advanced," Vaage explained. Prior to its cosmic debut, the game underwent rigorous testing on Earth, ensuring a smooth transition without any anticipated glitches.

Orbiting with Demons: The Cosmic Gaming Experience

The moment of truth arrived a few days after Christmas in 2023, when Doom finally sprung to life in orbit. However, the experience wasn't quite a traditional gaming session, as the satellite lacks a graphical user interface. Instead, the shooter was run as a software simulation. Rather than real-time player input, researchers utilized pre-recorded demo files to automatically play through game levels. This ingenious approach allowed the team to meticulously monitor for any anomalies or crashes induced by space radiation and to rigorously assess the stability of computations under genuine space conditions.

To imbue the experiment with a touch of interstellar flair, Vaage and ESA ingeniously integrated the satellite's camera. They replaced the game's familiar Martian landscapes with actual orbital images of Earth, transforming the in-game sky into a breathtaking celestial panorama. "The idea was to turn a real satellite image of Earth into the game's sky – all processed programmatically within the strict 256-color limitations of Doom's graphics," Vaage added. This creative fusion of gaming and real-world space imagery was a testament to their imaginative approach.

The "Why" Behind the Cosmic Game

For those pondering the motivation behind such an endeavor, a quick glance at Doom's history of unconventional installations—from vaporizers and charging bricks to pregnancy tests and even, dare we say, bacteria—provides a partial answer. While other games, like Battlefield, have ventured into similar experimental territories, none have quite captured the persistent, almost mythical, status of Doom in these bizarre tech showcases. The simplest answer, it seems, is often the most profound: they did it because they could.

This pioneering spirit has already inspired others. Shortly after, Polish company KP Labs replicated the feat, launching Doom on their own Intuition-1 satellite while simultaneously conducting hyperspectral Earth imaging. Looking ahead, ESA's next satellite, OPS-SAT VOLT, slated for 2026, is poised to become a new testing ground for even more advanced experiments, potentially incorporating quantum communication technology.