From the EMS Concept to Operations: First Usage of Automated Planning and Scheduling at ESOC

Abstract

This paper describes the migration from the current manual ESTRACK ground station allocation and scheduling process towards an automated approach. The automated approach will finally be implemented by the ESTRACK Management System (EMS), which provides the means to automatically plan ground station allocation, generate executable ground station schedules and monitor correct ground station schedule execution. The migration process will be discussed in the light of the experience gained during the acceptance tests of the first two (out of three) implemented EMS sub-systems, namely the ESTRACK Planning System (EPS) and the ESTRACK Scheduling System (ESS).