Michael Schmidhuber

Space operations : innovations, inventions, and discoveries

Space Operations: Innovations, lnventions, and Discoveries is a collection of materials presented at the 13th SpaceOps Conference, held in 2014 in Pasadena, California and organized by Caltechs Jet Prepulsion Laboratory. From numerous papers presented at the event, those selected for this volume represent a cross section of four main subject areas: Breakthrough Technologies for Space Operations; Mission Design and Concepts; Ground System Advances for Efficient and Secure Operations and Mission Operations. All of the selected papers exemplify the SpaceOps organizations goal of presenting and discussing the current state of space operations and the most recent developments in the field.

Superior Flexibility for the Control Room Workplace

The workplaces typically found in control rooms for spacecraft operations are rather plain and old-fashioned. This results in many limitations. Workplaces nowadays consist of one or more PC-type computers with one or multiple monitors attached to it. These usually have a locally installed operating system. The system is configured for one type of task in one dedicated project. Flexibility, cross-operability and redundancy are limited. They are usually provided by restricting the users into identical setups - a lowest common denominator. Free computing resource allocation is additionally restrained by separation of networks due to network security aspects. From the user-side it is however desirable to allow a user to choose from a variety of setups, regarding the allocation and arrangement of computing resources to monitors, the easy access to redundant resources and the parallel use of resources. The ultimate desire is the elimination of the physical assignment of resources like keyboard and mouse to specific computers and monitors. The goal is to have flexible workplaces that allow rapid reconfiguration of control rooms for temporary use, training and simulation areas as well as multi-mission operations with heterogeneous systems resulting in vastly higher efficiency in control room usage with reduced administrational efforts. Based on virtualization techniques a framework has been developed that allows secure access to server-hosted desktops. It ensures existing security policies while giving access to all control center resources. This paper demonstrates first results of the approach taken by GSOC for implementation in an evaluation environment and the plans for implementation in control rooms in the near future.

Virtualizing M&C Systems: First Operational Experience and Future Applications

Virtualization is a technology that allows emulating a complete computer platform. The potential use ranges from consolidating hardware to running several different operating systems in parallel on one computer to preserving the operability of heritage software. GSOC has been investigating the possibilities of virtualization for some time. Aside from the usual approach of virtualizing the central servers out of administrational, consolidational reasons, the possibilities and advantages of control room client virtualization was explored. While moving mainstream in other businesses, the space community is cautious to apply this technique to the mission critical monitoring and control systems. This paper illustrates three virtualization steps that are underway at GSOC and presents the experiences gained.

Communication and Infrastructure

This chapter describes the design aspects of a typical Mission Control Center (MCC) and the Ground Station Network. The Mission Control Center—as the name implies—is the central ground facility of a space mission. It is the central point where all data and management information concerning the spacecraft are consolidated. These data are received, checked, and processed, decisions are made and—in case of an emergency—the respective procedures are performed in order to restore the nominal conditions of the mission. The way how the MCC operates is defined by its design which specifies its capabilities, flexibility, and robustness.

Spacecraft Subsystem Operations

Chapter 6 describes the operation tasks of the various subsystems of a classic unmanned satellite in Earth orbits.

Space operations : experience, mission systems, and advanced concepts

Space Operations: Experience, Mission Systems, and Advanced Concepts is a collection of materials presented at the 12th SpaceOps Conference, held in Stockholm, Sweden in June 2012. From the almost 300 papers presented and discussed at the conference, those selected for this volume represent a cross section of three main subject areas: Mission Preparation and Management - mission design, development, and planning; Data and Communications - the infrastructure needed on the ground, from antennas to software, in order to communicate with and retrieve data from spaceborne resources; and Mission Execution - a focus on the aspects of specific space missions during preparation for flight and throughout operations. All of the selected papers exemplify the SpaceOps organizations goal of presenting and discussing the current state of space operations and the most recent developments in the field.

Tradeoffs in Design-to-Budget Projects

This paper aims at investigating a method to cope with tradeoffs in Design-to-Budget projects. It focuses only on mission operations and does not consider aspects related to spacecraft design, launcher or insurance. The possible tradeoffs depend upon different criteria (e.g. system availability, operational risk), whose relative importance is in turn imposed by the mission characteristics (e.g. recurring satellite routine operations, human spaceflight, LEOP). A methodology, issued from the optimization field, is first defined in order to evaluate the impact of these tradeoffs on the considered criteria. The methodology allows taking the mission characteristics into account and the allocated budget is modeled as a constraint of the problem. A list of cost reduction measures is then produced, supported by GSOC experience or the existing literature, together with an assessment of their impact on the criteria. Finally the methodology is applied in relation with a budget level to find out which cost reduction measures would satisfy the budget constraint and which criteria would be impacted.