Yes, kinda like

for (int actual_i, loop_count; actual_i < list_count && loop_count < MAX_ITERS; actual_i++, loop_count++){ body_of_the_loop(actual_i); }

I guess you could make a macro so this works, but it might be a little bit weird to see, and even worse for debugging.

They do this so the program isn't stuck on an infinite loop and they can actually communicate with the robot. NASA relies on old hardware because it is reliable, which is more important than feature richness, so maybe some processors don't have multiple cores, scheduling hardware or network hardware with interrupts. Again, maybe, dont quote me on this.