As autonomous capabilities become increasingly critical in the planetary exploration, space robotics demands software that is both modular and mission-assured. The Robot Operating System (ROS 2 Humble) has become the de facto standard for terrestrial robotics, offering extensive libraries for autonomy and simulation. However, its lack of deterministic execution, memory safety, and fault containment renders it unsuitable as a standalone solution for flight software. In contrast, NASA’s F Prime ( \(\hbox {F}^\prime \) ) framework delivers real-time schedulability, fault tolerance, and flight heritage, but lacks the extensibility of the ROS 2 Humble ecosystem. This work presents a hybrid architecture that integrates \(\hbox {F}^\prime \) with ROS2 using Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) as a lightweight, schema-defined middleware. Commands and telemetry are exchanged between the two systems via a Protobuf bridge, enabling \(\hbox {F}^\prime \) to handle control and monitoring while ROS 2 Humble provides simulation and high-level behavior through Gazebo and RViz. The architecture was implemented and validated in a simulation using the Leo Rover. Experimental results demonstrate that the bridge achieves 100% command delivery with the sub-millisecond latency across 600 samples and gracefully recovers from subsystem faults. Despite IMU message drop rates reaching up to 19.9%, control and actuation performance remained unaffected. This integration lays the foundation for future flight software that couples ROS 2 Humble-based autonomy with the reliability of flight-proven frameworks like \(\hbox {F}^\prime \) .
