tech track papers

Categories: 2018, Thinking About the Future

Resilient, Scalable, Secure, Enterprise Ground Services (EGS) of the Future

Previous satellite ground architectures were custom designed for each satellite system. This methodology is typically called stove-piped architecture. Although there may have been valid reasons in the past for custom design of every satellite ground system, the newer trend is to design enterprise ground services (EGS), resulting in a common services infrastructure.

An EGS takes advantage of commonalities between seemingly different systems. This does not imply all future systems should be constrained to be identical; there will always be differences between systems requiring some degree of mission-unique software (MUS). The objective is to create a resilient, scalable, secure EGS for all aspects of the EGS, including flight operations as well as data processing and archival.

Once set up, the EGS will result in cost savings as new missions are added. For example, an EGS should contain established firewalls, software, etc., with security accreditations and approvals. Follow-on missions will benefit from the reduced cost of accomplishing accreditation and the accompanying reduced risk of schedule delays. Additionally, mission-unique capabilities and interfaces involving command/telemetry databases and space-ground communications can be simplified by common approaches across multiple missions to standards-based interfaces, including Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) recommendations and XML Telemetric & Command Exchange (XTCE). This discussion will look at methodologies to improve cost effectiveness of EGSs.