OPS-SAT: Operational concept for ESA’s first mission dedicated to operational technology

Abstract

This paper describes the unique mission concept of the ESA OPS-SAT project. OPS-SAT is ESA’s first nanosatellite mission and is the first mission world-wide to be designed exclusively to demonstrate ground-breaking satellite and ground control software under real flight conditions. The project is being led by the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Germany which has recognised the need to try something very different to break out of the “has never flown, will never fly” cycle in the mission control domain. The project is presently in Phase C and will launch in Q3/4 2017. The concept is unique in several ways not least because it involves replacing the entire on-board software suite, right down to operating system, on a daily basis. This also extends to the ground system which must be designed to be replaceable on the same time scales. The satellite has to remain safe even though it is recognised that with little time for minimal preload testing, the ground and on-board software will contain dangerous bugs. The concept also has to deal with the inevitable consequences of single event radiation effects on the commercial off-the-shelf hardware and software selected. Finally the mission has to provide and unprecedented levels of configurability to allow as many experiments to run as possible. In this paper we will also describe how ESOC intends to interact with the experimenters. There are presently over 100 experiments registered for the flight and this number is expected to grow as we approach launch. The challenge is how to deal with this number of experimenters and keep the operations as low cost as possible.