Dave Lang's early work on tethers led to his being contacted by NASA in 1982 to develop simulation code to perform flight readiness certification for Shuttle Missions STS-46 and STS-75 flying the Tethered Satellite System (TSS) experiments; thus modern GTOSS was born. He participated as a tether specialist in NASA Mission Control during both of these missions, making him the only person to be in attendance at NASA's Mission Control for every manned tethered space flight ever flown.

During this period of time other space tether experiments were being developed and flown, including SEDS, TIPS, ATEX, ProSEDS, etc. GTOSS was used at some point in the development of all of these experiments. More than 25 major aerospace and NASA facilities have employed GTOSS through the years.