A planning tool for ISS payload operations and preparations

Abstract

The Belgian User Support and Operations Centre (B.USOC) was supporting the operations of European Space Agency (ESA) payload Solar Monitoring Observatory (SOLAR) from February 2008 until February 2017. Mounted on an external platform of the Columbus module of the International Space Station (ISS), SOLAR tracked the Sun in order to perform quasi-continuous measurements of the solar irradiance. As the mission was extended beyond its initial planned duration of 1.5 years, a custom in-house tool was developed in order to support and automate the daily operational tasks and maximize the scientific return of operations within the existing external constraints impacting SOLAR operations. By 2012, B.USOC had its own, web-based knowledge management tool developed by the operator team. The tool gathers all necessary operational data from NASA/ESA and internal sources. The first function was to predict the upcoming Sun Visibility Windows defined by the attitude and orbital control of the station, indicating when sun observations could take place. The tool was therefore called Predictor and has been used intensively since its release to automate a lot of the daily routine tasks whilst reducing the operator inaccuracies and errors in these tasks. Additional features were added such as; displaying SOLAR telemetry, ensure configuration control of SOLAR command schedules, on-board file management, support for payload files uplink and transfer, operator shift planning, supporting daily timeline reviews, generating daily operations reports,…. all with a single interface to the operator. While the Predictor tool was all tailored to the SOLAR and ISS operations environment, the B.USOC team developed the idea of a more generic tool that could manage several future payloads simultaneously. With the SOLAR mission ending in February 2017 and other B.USOC assigned payloads Fluid Science Laboratory (FSL) and Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) coming up, B.USOC operators started to develop the generic successor of the Predictor tool, a more Generic Planning Tool. This paper will specify the features of the new Generic Planning Tool and the comparison with the Predictor tool, its integration in daily B.USOC operations, and how it applies modern web application development techniques to make a secure and extendable tool for operations support. Eventually, the benefit of such techniques for different control centres is discussed. In one of the first stages of development, the main question was whether the Predictor code would be altered to support other payloads, or a new tool would be made from scratch. Most of Predictor functionalities were specifically made for the SOLAR payload. Practically all code would have been changed. With that disadvantage, you could also start from scratch with the same effort. In combination with the fact that development dates back from 2012, a lot has changed in the meantime concerning how web applications are developed and maintained. Also the sources that Predictor accessed to gather all relevant data have changed over the years. Modern web technologies and communication protocols make it possible to retrieve Predictor relevant information more easily and faster. The retrieved information was coming from NASA sources (South Atlantic Anomaly data, comms data, thruster events, ISS attitude, ISS timeline activities …), internal sources (staff availability …) and other web based sources (ISS Two Line Element data). New development technologies are also able to support the rising mobile devices compatibility, scalability and increasing security measures. A lot of features from the Predictor can be transferred to the Generic Planning Tool and will be generalized to be able to support multiple payloads such as managing file uplinks and transfers from the ground to the payload, science planning scheduling based on defined constraints, daily timeline reviews, generating Daily Operations Reports (DOR) out of the data stored in the tool, or visualizing all the information an operator would need on console. All these features can be filtered based on what the user wants to see, e.g. the features related to the payload he/she is operating. Other and new features are: tracking of routine daily tasks by means of a checklist, displaying payload Events and TM, long term activity planning, and a fully interactive and configurable timeline where the user can add bands containing all kinds of data from the different sources. Since multiple payloads will be operated by B.USOC, the user can select which TM he would like to visualize on the timeline based on his needs at the moment. B.USOC operators are not only on console, they are also responsible for the payload operations preparations which is bound to schedules and deliverables. To incorporate such long-term planning, the planning tool is also able to support the planning and visualization on the timeline in a way that Microsoft Project can visualize long term planning. Due to all these different types of user usage, the user is therefore able to customize the tool based on his working position on the moment whether it is as a payload operator or as manager for; payloads preparations or increment coordination tasks for example. One of the main changes from a web development point of view that has now widely been adopted, is the strict separation between the client application (front-end) running in the user’s web browser, and a service dealing with the database interactions (back-end) on the hosting server. The amount of web services that have such architecture are now almost endless (Google calendar, Google Maps, Alfresco, SharePoint, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Skype, Redmine …). This means that the user’s own client application can access those services’ data and use this data without being forced to use their own client application. Not only has it been decided to create the Generic Planning Tool application based on such architecture, other sources previously fetched by the Predictor have also made the change to this concept. In B.USOC’s case, the back-end of the planning tool is developed by Ground Controller (GC) personnel. This service, named Hourglass, is responsible for the user’s management, database interactions and operational data gathering. Whilst the client application, containing the B.USOC specific operations functionalities, is developed by the Operator team, being the end-user of the tool. The important aspect of creating modern web applications is to support scalability and movability. Most control centres require the planning of events, managing of tasks, version control of files, managing file uplinks and transfers, importing TM, etc. All sources of information that a control centre needs, are distributed among many origins and can be brought together in one tool to display all relevant data to the end user. How the control centre uses/visualizes these different types of data depends on the operations. It is up to the client application developer to define how they would like to use the data and tailor it for their own needs so routine tasks can be automated. And this model makes it easier for a control centre to develop their own web application, accessing already existing services, thus reducing the cost and skills accompanied with the development of such tool.