The Network of Centres Flight Operations Coordination and Design Tool

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8th International Conference on Space Operations
The Network of Centres Flight Operations
Coordination and Design Tool
Stefania Cornara Sandra Negrín Fernando Pina
Howard Nye ESA/ESOC
Paul OShea Vega Group
DEIMOS Space
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Presentation Overview

• Overview The Network of Technical Centres (NofC)
• NofC Pilot Study Concurrent Engineering
  Techniques
• Concurrent Engineering NofC Prototype Facility
  (CENOC)
• Main Results and Achievements of CENOC
• Roadmap for Future Developments
• The NofC Coordination and Design Tool (CDT)
• Enhancements of the CENOC Prototype Capabilities
• CDT Layout and Main Functionalities
• Conclusions and Future Perspectives

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The Network of Technical Centres

• The European Network of Technical Centres (NofC)
  initiative has been established to seek benefits
  for ESA Member States through
• cross-support in the conduct of missions
  operations
• avoiding duplication maximising re-use of
  existing systems
• cooperative management of investments, facilities
  and staff
• sizing of overall capacities according to overall
  needs
• distribution of works among the different centres
  through coordinated use of available spare
  capacity

• The pilot network of Flight Operations Technical
  Centres is made up of the representatives of all
  major European national agencies involved in
  satellite flight operations ASI, BNSC, CDTI,
  CNES, DLR, NSC and SSC
• ESA/ESOC acts as the overall coordinator of these
  activities

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NofC for Flight Operations Pilot Phase

• The first Pilot Phase of the NofC for Flight
  Operations, in 2000, pointed out that some form
  of tools would be required to manage and
  coordinate the activities between the different
  participating centres
• In 2001, DEIMOS Space were tasked to develop the
  Concurrent Engineering NofC Prototype Facility
  (CENOC)
• Identification of the enhancements for the
  follow-on implementation of a flight operations
  Coordination and Design Tool (CDT), which began
  at the end of 2003

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CENOC Prototype

• Concurrent Engineering Concepts and Approach
  implementation of a process integrating all
  functional disciplines associated with system
  design and development
• by systematically simultaneously employing a
  teaming of these disciplines
• in order to integrate concurrently apply all
  necessary processes required to produce an
  effective and efficient product/system design
  that satisfies all customer/mission requirements,
  at least cost, and within a significantly reduced
  time frame

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CENOC Prototype (cont.)

• Application of CE approach to the CENOC Prototype
• Centralised management and remote maintenance of
  the NofC Databases
• Model and parametric-driven design of the ground
  segment

• CENOC Prototype design and development
  constraints
• Three workstations to simulate the network of
  system components
• Simulated remote access via internal network
• Interface definition among the system components
  via database
• System built on top of a well-known Office
  Automation Package

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CENOC/CDT Functionalities

• Execution of NofC Management and Coordination
  role
• Centralised management of the existing and
  planned NofC DBs
• Ground facility loading
• Graphic representation of conflicts in ground
  segment utilisation
• Tabular and graphical management reports
• Remote maintenance of the NofC databases to allow
  orderly revision of input data by the respective
  technical centres/agencies

• Analysis and high-level definition of the ground
  segment and utilisation scenario for a specific
  project
• High level design of ground segment
  configurations (given mission)
• Facility loading analysis
• Resource availability across the different
  technical centres
• System-level trade-off of ground segment options,
  based on functionality, availability, risk
  assessment and cost

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CENOC/CDT Application Scenarios
Analysis of What-if Situations
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CENOC/CDT Application Scenarios (cont.)
Support Co-located Group of Representatives

• Definition of multi-agency network of facilities
  (ground stations, antennas, control centres,
  etc.)
• Ground segment concept and satellite operations
  scenario (potentially involving more than one
  agency)
• Cost estimations and optimisation of the
  different scenarios

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CENOC/CDT Design Process Modelling

• Ground segment design process is model-driven
• Involves disciplines that progress in parallel
  with their estimations
• Level of interdependency within the system
  modelling is very low and affects resource
  availability and utilisation

Design activity coordinated by a System Engineer
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CENOC/CDT Design Process Models
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CENOC/CDT Ground Segment Design Scope
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CENOC/CDT Ground Segment Design Process
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CENOC Prototype Implementation
Visualisation Graphs and Reports
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CENOC Prototype Implementation (cont.)
Design Process Models
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CENOC Prototype Implementation (cont.)
What-if Analysis
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Main Results and Achievements of CENOC

• Usable local database maintenance controlled
  data exchange
• Concurrent Engineering techniques analysed
  process to provide a coherent framework for
  Ground Segment design (ESOC-specific)
• High-level ground segment design with cost and
  risk outputs
• Enables preparation of management reports for
  facility utilisation
• Fast development time and fast response to
  requested changes

• Prepared for extension to remote administration
  and maintenance
• Straightforward to maintain
• Initial feedback from ESOC users was very
  positive
• Promising basis for future system enhancements
  and developments

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CENOC Demonstration Campaign Findings

• The results have a general scope, since the
  missions considered cover a wide spectrum of
  possible mission objectives and scenarios
• Possibility to draw most of the input
  requirements and assumptions relevant to the
  ground segment design process from the expertise
  of the NofC representatives involved in the
  demonstration sessions
• The demonstration phase allowed to completely
  validate the parametric formulation of the design
  process
• Fairly positive results and useful guidelines to
  proceed with the follow-on implementation the
  Coordination and Design Tool (CDT)

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Roadmap for Future Developments

• Implementation of distributed Network of Centres
  capabilities
• Snapshots of the NofC configuration database
• Private / public areas for each technical
  centre/agency
• Central repository of project designs
• Possibility to access restricted
  information/databases outside the boundary of the
  Network of Centres

• Database and database management improvements
• Check consistency of data entered by each
  technical centre
• Enhance data exchange capability and coordination
  functions, including sending/receiving data over
  a remote connection

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Roadmap for Future Developments (cont.)

• Extension of the facility to cover other parts of
  the ground segment design process that have not
  been modelled yet

• Development of additional functionalities in the
  existing tools
• Generation of additional reports and charts
• Improvement to the Control Centre and Antenna
  Load Analysis
• Enhancement of the Database query capabilities
• More breakdown on Expert Output for costs and
  manpower levels
• On-line Help with explicit units/restrictions on
  data entry, hints for the decision-making
  process, tool usage guidelines, etc.

• Implement cross-relationships among models, if
  and when needed

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Roadmap for Future Developments (cont.)

• Assessment of the compliance of a design with
  input requirements
• System security issues
• Finer access control
• Approval/rejection procedures for data ingestion
  into the database

• Assessment of potential changes on the technology
  used
• Other database managers
• Other web server technologies
• Porting most of the facility to web
• Faster data retrieval and storage through the
  models-database interface

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CDT Context for Ground Segment Modelling
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CDT High-Level Context
Centralised Design Process

• Design process run at a TC, where an
  instantiation of the NofC DB is made available

• After finishing the design, data can be sent to
  the central database (at ESOC)

ESOC

• Private data (e.g. costs and risks) can be
  retained at each TC

TC
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Conclusions and Future Perspectives
CENOC Prototype proved the feasibility of
implementing a tool to support the application of
CE techniques to ground segment design CDT
development is on-going, based on the
requirements agreed with ESA