Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
next decade. Part of data capture is data validation, which is a necessary part
of the flight/ground “conversation” required for onboard science data storage
management.
As all three of these areas are concerned nearly exclusively with processing
data within the ground system itself, there is no real role for the flight system
to play in expediting the process directly. However, there are indirect sup-
porting functions such as onboard packaging of data prior to downlink and
initiation of the communications link between flight and ground where the
flight system could play a larger role. Routine onboard operations of this sort
are subsumed under activity 5, onboard engineering support activities, as will
be discussed later.
The remaining nine operational areas all offer significant opportunities for
an expanded, autonomous flight presence. Those areas labeled “low” (activ-
ities 1, 8, 9, 11, and 12) currently are largely ground dominated, but could
be at least partially migrated onboard to produce overall system cost and/or
eciency gains.
The “medium” activity areas (3, 4, and 7) already are performed on-
board, but either there will be room for expanded functional scope (poten-
tially replacing ground effort) or the ground system typically would have
to generate some support products to simplify current onboard processing.
So cost/eciency gains potentially can be realized either by ground-to-flight
migration or by introducing entirely new functionality to the flight system.
Finally, the activity area 5 labeled “high” is today already fully autonomous
onboard, but new functionality could be introduced to produce improved sys-
tem performance.
