Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
2
Overview of Flight and Ground Software
To provide a context for later chapters, this chapter presents brief summaries
of the responsibilities and functionalities of traditional ground and flight sys-
tems as viewed from the framework of a total system process, followed by
highlights of the key drivers when making flight-ground trades. Details in
the areas of attitude and orbit determination and control, mission design,
and system engineering [
47
,
84
,
92
,
189
,
191
], which are essential for successful
space missions, are beyond the scope of this topic, but are well developed and
interesting in their own right.
2.1 Ground System Software
Traditionally, the ground system has been responsible almost entirely for
spacecraft planning and scheduling (P&S), establishment of communications
for uplink and downlink, as well as science data capture, archiving, distribu-
tion, and (in some cases) processing. The ground has also shouldered the bulk
of the calibration burden (both science and engineering) and much of the job
of health and safety (H&S) verification. And when major onboard anoma-
lies or failures arise, flight operation team (FOT) personnel are charged with
determining the underlying cause and developing a long-term solution.
So the traditional ground system has occupied the ironic position of having
most of the responsibility for managing the spacecraft and its activities, and
yet (with the exception of the planning and scheduling function) relying on
the spacecraft to provide nearly all information required for carrying out those
responsibilities. Today, in a more conventional workplace setting, this kind of
work organization might be analyzed (from a reengineering perspective) to
be an artificially fragmented process with unnecessary management layering
leading to degraded eciency and wasteful costs.
In the context of reengineering, the standard solution to this sort of prob-
lem is to re-integrate the fragmented process or processes by empowering the
