Keeping 123 the spacecraft (S/C) healthy and productive is the responsibility and the main concern of the S/C flight control team (FCT). Space weather includes effects and conditions that favour the aging of a S/C and its instruments, e.g. degradation of sensors and solar arrays by charged particles and single event upsets (SEU). It is worth to stress out that it is hard to detect when the environmental conditions of a S/C are safe and when they are hazardous. So far, the most widely used approach of a FCT to counteract these effects has been to play safe. Playing safe, i.e. invoking counter measures early enough and keeping them for a long enough period, is a means to reduce the risk, but it is not the most efficient one. The dynamics of space weather could lead to situations where the instruments are shielded hours before the conditions become really hazardous. On the other hand it might happen that the FCT assumes safe conditions long before they actually are. single source, facilitates the analysis of this data therefore enhancing user awareness of space weather effects and possible cause-effect relationships between space weather events and S/C anomalous conditions.The system provides an interface to external applications to include data produced by physical models for the space environment and its effects. Furthermore, trained artificial neural networks or other plug-in tools can access all the data and produce forecasts for certain parameters. These forecasts can be fed back into the data-warehouse and be used for monitoring, analysis and operations planning.The reference mission for SEIS is INTEGRAL, ESA's gamma ray observatory. It also includes data from other ESA missions: ENVISAT and XMM. The main objective for INTEGRAL is to maximize the payload instruments' time while operating in safe condition, resulting in an increase of the S/C's productivity.The system is a prototype whose objective is the proof of concept for new emerging technologies applicable to the mission operations domain, increasing the quality and effectiveness of mission operations management.The paper presents the system, focusing on the application of the new technologies to support the FCT in their critical decision making process and its expected impact in the INTEGRAL's operations strategy.

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Today's Information Systems include many components and computational processes such as Data Warehouses, Data Marts, ETL processes, Data Analysis tools, etc. An appropriate integration of theses components requires the extensive use of metadata. However the representation, consolidation, management, and access to this metadata information can cause a major overhead in the system. This paper presents an XML based Metadata Repository that consists of a centralized repository built upon standard XML technologies such as XML Schema, XSL, XQuery and XLink, coupled with an appropriate storage that proved to be a flexible, and yet inexpensive, metadata solution. Moreover it provides the means for the metamodel extensibility and easy integration into any Information System. The feasibility of this solution is documented by the description and discussion of a prototype implementation currently deployed and running in operational state as part of a complex Information System.

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Space is by nature a harsh environment: it is required first to know well all possible risks and then take appropriate measures to mitigate them. Radiation from the sun and cosmic rays is a silent but very damaging hazard, particularly for sensitive sensors, on-board electronics as well as solar arrays.A A preventive very costly measure is to build radiation-hardened components. A complimentary measure is to operate following the forecast of expected radiation levels and adapt the spacecraft configuration accordingly, to minimize risks. The latter is not a new concept, however expected on board radiation level estimation are so far