Tools for Operations Preparation and Automation: The Opsware Approach

Abstract

The automation of ground operations is a key issue for reducing exploitation costs of satellite systems while improving safety and availability of the provided service. Many operations managers are considering the implementation of new functions for automating operations. Their motivations can be separated in two classes:

• minimize the staff or operate more satellites with the same staff, and thus reduce exploitation costs. For this purpose, automated operations allow an optimized off-line preparation of operations by experts during working hours, and they relieve operators from routine or time-consuming tasks (detailed monitoring of parameters, preparation and release of commands, ground station management)

• improve safety of operations and availability of the space system. For this purpose, automated operations reduce the risk of human errors (a common cause of service interruption) thanks to a complete, rigorous, repetitive and fast execution of planned operations. Moreover they allow a larger number of verifications, a reduced reaction time upon anomalies and a dynamic optimization given the available ground and space resources.

To address these issues MATRA MARCONI SPACE has developed a set of scalable complementary products based on state of the art technologies, called OPSWARE. This paper provides users feedback on these flight proven products, and describes the latest improvements of these tools that are continuously updated to take into account experience from on-going missions.