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The Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme main objective is to support Europe's goals regarding sustainable development and global governance of the environment by providing timely and quality data, information, services and knowledge. To achieve this objective, the GMES programme features a Space Segment component comprising five Sentinels mission families. Scheduled for launch in 2011 and 2012, Sentinels 1, 2 and 3 represent the first step in the deployment of the GMES Space Segment. They are regarded as operational missions and as such require a high degree of reliability and availability also at the level of the ground segment while minimising the operational effort associated to the routine mission phase. This paper will describe the assumptions and constraints driving the definition of the GMES-Sentinels Flight Operations Segment (FOS). The resulting Operational Concept applied across the 3 missions will be summarised highlighting the innovative aspects, in particular the automated payload mission planning based on Orbit Position scheduled telecommands. Finally, a summary of the overall ground segment will be provided and the Sentinels FOS specific facilities, based on extensive use of ESOC ground software infrastructure, presented.

The Atmospheric Dynamics Mission ADM-AEOLUS, the second Earth Explorer Core mission part of ESA's Living Planet Programme, will provide global observations of wind profiles from space to improve the quality of weather forecasts, and to advance our understanding of atmospheric dynamics and climate processes. By demonstrating new laser technology, AEOLUS is seen as an investigational mission paving the way for future meteorological satellites.A substantial decrease in the operational effort associated to the routine mission phase is one of the mission's major goals. This calls for definition of an innovative operational concept aimed at minimising ground intervention both in nominal and contingency situations. This is realised through robust mission planning and the use of both on board autonomy and operational automation in the ground systems. This paper will discuss the AEOLUS on-board autonomy in particular related to the instrument routine operations and failure recovery, present an outline of the AEOLUS Mission Planning system and provide an overview of the automation implemented in the AEOLUS Ground Systems.The AEOLUS Flight Operations Segment (FOS) is based on extensive re-use of elements developed in the context of previous Earth Observation ground segments. It is the first mission incorporating some of the latest ESA Ground Operation System (EGOS) infrastructure developments i.e. mission control system (SCOS-2000), network interfacing (NIS) and spacecraft simulator (SIMSAT), and in particular new developments in the area of control system automation (MATIS) and integrated ground station management (EMS). A summary of the overall ground segment will be provided and the FOS specific facilities required to support the mission will be discussed.The AEOLUS FOS Mission Planning System (MPS) concept will be further elaborated highlighting its simplicity of use, the modular design and its distributed complexity across the ground segment centres: FOS and Payload Data Segment (PDS). The MPS cycle and ground segment automation features will be fully described covering how the commanding and operations are planned, how the use of Automatic and Release based commanding stacks allows self-regulating TC uplink activities, how automation of ground station pass scheduling and operations is done using MATIS and how the EMS is planned to be used to support the AEOLUS routine operations.

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