The objective of this activity is to provide an end-to-end solution based on the new ESA Monitoring and Control infrastructure enabling a radical simplification of the monitoring and control of different types of small satellites (e.g. nanosats, cubesats, smallsats, EO low cost missions, etc.).

 

Low Cost Operations can only be achieved if the overall mission is designed in a way which enables a radically different approach to be adopted. The low cost principles are expected to be applied across the board, including the space and the ground segment, in particular the elements which attract the majority of the development, integration and validation costs. The EGS-CC provides a generic and powerful platform to develop full monitoring and control applications for a specific controlled system. The development effort to provide an EGS-CC based system is expected to be minimum if the controlled system (in particular the spacecraft) complies to the relevant standards. However, the effort to deploy, customize and validate EGS-CC based solutions can be seen as prohibitive for very small and low budget missions. The availability of sufficient help and training material and/or example reference missions will contribute to the acceptance and adaptation.

The main objective of this activity is therefore to identify the possible approaches enabling the adoption of EGS-CC based solutions for low budget missions i.e. missions which are prepared to sacrifice aspects such as the reliability and the mission return in favour of a reduction in the budgetary needs to set-up and operate the full mission.

 

Possible ideas / approaches to be explored are:

• 'Installation free' Operations Services, whereby the mission / test operators are provided with Internet based access to an EGS-CC based system providing the necessary MC access to the controlled system. The operations or test team is not at all involved in the design, development, deployment, validation and operation of the mission control system but rather only provides the necessary inputs, such as the MC data definitions according to an agreed format/standard. This approach could be very attractive for organizations which do not have a critical mass of missions to manage in parallel or do not have EGSE product lines.

• 'Shared MC systems', whereby a low cost mission is 'added' to an existing EGS-CC based system instance through configuration/tailoring (no software). This is considered as the most promising approach e.g. to deal with many low cost missions all managed within the same organization.

• ?End-to-end File based Distributed Operations Services', whereby the interactions between the controlling and the controlled system only take place via discrete data units such as files. This approach would allow that exactly the same system instance is set-up (customized, configured, tailored, deployed) and used across all mission preparation, validation and operational phases. This could be achieved by leveraging on the EGS-CC concepts of commanding and reception routes, whereby exactly the same (file based) operation could be executed in the pre- and post-launch phases by interfacing with the controlled systems using different communication protocols.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The tasks to be done in the frame of this activity are the following:

 

• Analysis and tailoring of EGSE / MCS requirements for smallsats and low cost operations.

• Identification of EGSE / MCS building blocks and design architecture for smallsats and low cost operations.

• Build prototype of a system EGSE / MCS for a selected smallsat demonstrating its capability and the required low cost operations.