FlightGround Integration: The Future of Operability

The interface between a spacecraft and its ground operations segment includes the flow of commands, configuration, and sequencing elements to the spacecraft, and the flow of telemetry and data products from the spacecraft. Creating and implementing a complete definition of this interface simplifies and standardizes mission operations, allowing easy sharing of operations personnel across missions. Early spacecraft featured a simple flight / ground interface (FGI) using hardware command decoding in the radio, driven by technological limitations of the time. Modern spacecraft use command and data handling (CDH) avionics on which flight software executes, which in turn controls and configures the mission, executes subsystem and instrument instructions, and implements critical fault protection actions. Deep space missions feature advanced operations software for running sequenced activities over a period of weeks, which allows them to function with only infrequent ground contact. This approach comes at the cost of increased complexity in the FGI, requiring expensive modifications to heritage flight software and ground systems. By hosting the interface in the radio instead of the CDH avionics, modern missions can approximate the FGI design simplicity of early spacecraft, with significant advantages for vendor competition, lowered costs, standardization of operations, and reduction of implementation risk. I. Mission Operations Domainission operations for spacecraft involves both the uplink of products to the spacecraft and the return of mission data. Deep space mission operations may be viewed as a function of the mission objectives, and consists of three items, in priority order:1. Collect science data to achieve the mission objectives.

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“…This also leads to the ability to simulate operations strategies while changes can still be made to the flight system design. [14] …”

Section: Reduced Schedule Risk For Adaptationmentioning

confidence: 99%