Satellite and Ground Station Planning Systems
VEGA's Mission Planning Systems capability includes developing
and maintaining Satellite and Ground Station Planning and
Scheduling Systems.
As space systems become more complex, so the need for automatic
planning tools to assist the operations staff are required.
Satellite and ground segment control today can involve the
generation of several thousand telecommands or instructions every
day. Automatic Mission Planning tools, which prepare the sequences
of instructions to be provided to the Mission Control System, are
essential to reduce operations costs.
These MPS take satellite usage requests as input and schedule
the operations of the satellite within the mission and satellite
constraints such as ground station visibility, on-board power,
on-board data management etc. The output of the mission planning
tool is a detailed time-line of instructions for the spacecraft and
the ground stations.
VEGA has an extensive track record in providing Satellite and
Ground Station Planning Systems including:
- Development of automated Mission Planning Systems (MPS). This
is based on the use of a mission planning kernel, the Enhanced
Kernel Library for Operational Planning Systems (EKLOPS).
EKLOPS-based Mission Planning Systems (MPS) are currently
supporting the daily operations of several spacecraft including
Envisat, Mars Express and Venus Express.
- Development of the Mission Planning Systems for several
missions, including: ERS-1, ERS-2, Pastel, Envisat, Mars-Express,
and Venus-Express.
- Development of the ESA ESTRACK ground station planning
system.
Contact VEGA for further
information about space satellite and ground station planning
systems