THE COLUMBUS GROUND SEGMENT – A PRECURSOR FOR FUTURE MANNED MISSIONS

In the beginning the space programs were self standing national activities, often in competition to other nations. Today space flight becomes more and more an international task. Complex space mission and deep space explorations are not longer to be stemmed by one agency or nation alone but are joint activities of several nations. The best example for such a joint (ad-) venture at the moment is the International Space Station ISS. Such international activities define complete new requirements for the supporting ground segments. The world-wide distribution of a ground segment is not any longer limited to a network of ground stations with the aim to provide a good coverage of the space craft. The coverage is sometimes – like for the ISSanyway ensured by using a relay satellite system instead. In addition to the enhanced down- and uplink methods a ground segment is aimed to connect the different centres of competence of all participating agencies/nations. From the space craft operations point of view such transnational ground segments are required to support distributed and shared operations in a predefined decision/commanding hierarchy. This has to be taken into account in the technical topology as well as for the operational set-up and teaming. Last not least increases the duration of missions, which requires a certain flexibility of the ground segment and long-term maintenance strategies for the ground segment with a special emphasis on nonintrusive replacements. The Russian space station MIR has been in the orbit for about 15 years, the ISS is currently targeted for 2020, to be for over 20 years in space

A Resupply Scenario For The Columbus Mantended Freeflyer (MTFF)

Within the long-term framework of establishing a coherent system that supports permanent and autonomous European presence in space , the MTFF as an integrated flight configuration assumes a major role among the other COLUMBUS elements and joins Ariane V, HERMES, EDRS and Ground Segment facilities as an important building block, leading to a coherent European space capability. The MTFF is designed for an operational on-orbit period of 30 years, which will be made possible by periodic in-orbit servicing activities. The in-orbit servicing activities are to be made possible by a resupply system, which will have to provide and prepare all items needed for the in-orbit servicing. This will include exchange units for in-orbit maintenance and repair of system and payloads, consumables, new payload sets, etc

Columbus Operations – Joint undertaking between DLR and Industry

Columbus operation is a special challenge not only for space vehicle development, but also for deploying new operational concepts for ground support. Due to the long runtime of such a project and the related constraints new approaches are necessary to have the project alive over that long period. One new contractual and technical approach of spacecraft operation and maintenance has now been set up between ESA and the industrial consortium EADS/DLR and other major European industrial partners with regards to the ISS and Columbus program. Together with the expertise in hardware and vehicle design of EADS, DLR, one of Europe’s specialists in the spacecraft operations, forms the backbone of the new operational set up

"A Decentralized Operations Concept for the European Payloads on the International Space Station"

The European Module Columbus of the International Space Station (ISS) is planned to be launched 2004. For its exploitation phase as well as for the early utilisation of the Space Station starting from 2003 onwards the operations procedures are now being defined in detail and the implementation of specific infrastructure has started. A decentralised operations concept will allow the investigators to perform their experiments using the telescience technique of remote experiment operations whenever feasible. User Support and Operation Centres (USOCs) will act as Facility Responsible Centres (FRC) performing the operations for multi user experiment facilities. The Columbus Control Centre (COL-CC) will perform the Columbus system operations, co-ordinate the European payload operations and provide the European Communications network. This paper gives an overview on the operations concepts and the tasks and set up of the involved sites

International Space Station Systems Engineering Case Study

This case study on the International Space Station considers what many believe to have been the ultimate international engineering project in history. The initial plans involved the direct participation of 16 nations, 88 launches and over 160 spacewalks-more space activities than NASA had accomplished prior to the 1993 International Space Station decision. Probably more important was the significant leap in System Engineering (SE) execution that would be required to build and operate a multi-national space station. In a short period of time, NASA and its partners had to work out how to integrate culturally different SE approaches, designs, languages and operational perspectives on risk and safety

International Space Station Systems Engineering Case Study

This case study on the International Space Station considers what many believe to have been the ultimate international engineering project in history. The initial plans involved the direct participation of 16 nations, 88 launches and over 160 spacewalks-more space activities than NASA had accomplished prior to the 1993 International Space Station decision. Probably more important was the significant leap in System Engineering (SE) execution that would be required to build and operate a multi-national space station. In a short period of time, NASA and its partners had to work out how to integrate culturally different SE approaches, designs, languages and operational perspectives on risk and safety

Columbus: Attached Pressurized Module Configuration-MTFF Pressurized Module Configuration

The first part of this paper describes the main technical features of the European Space Agency\u27s Columbus Attached Pressurized Module. The Module is an integral part of the manned core of the International Space Station, and is a development of the ESA Spacelab Module. As such it is a modular 4 segment construction of 12 m length, 4 m diameter which will be launched on an NSTS flight, currently scheduled in 1994 as Station assembly flight 16. Its internal configuration is a doubly symmetric cross section of 4 identical rack envelopes separated by standoffs carrying utilities. Being a part of the Space Station core, it has system and subsystem architectures which will be compatible with those of the other Modules. Its purpose is to provide resources for materials, fluid and life sciences payloads over a 30 year lifetime, The on-orbit payload accommodation is for up to 10.000 kg housed in up to 25 m of rack volume, with 10 kw power and 100 mbits I sec data transfer, The module will normally be occupied by two crew working in a one atmosphere shirt-sleeve environment, operating the payloads and performing maintenance as required

Paper Session I-B - Crew Training for International Space Station: Plans, Concepts and Issues on the Eve of First Element Launch

Within months of the presentation of this paper, there will be a new star in the night sky. Traveling in low earth orbit at 17,000 miles per hour, it will consist of the first elements of the International Space Station (ISS). Built through the cooperative efforts of 7 international space agencies representing almost every spacefaring nation on the planet, astronauts and cosmonauts are scheduled to begin construction of the 470 ton orbiting laboratory later this year. To prepare for this endeavor, a multi-lateral team must train the crew members to assemble, operate, utilize and maintain this new spacecraft using experience from current and past programs, as well as new concepts and technologies. This paper describes the training program that is preparing astronauts and cosmonauts for ISS and laying the groundwork for future multi-national space missions

Adapting Columbus Operations and Providing a Basis for Future Endeavours

On 15th December 2015, Timothy Peake – the 4th ESA astronaut in 20 months – headed into orbit for a 6-month stay on the ISS. The British astronaut's "Principia" mission holds many interesting tasks, not only for Tim Peake himself (he performed an EVA on 15th January 2016) but also for the teams on the ground. One of the most exciting activities was the second session of the Airway Monitoring experiment, which again included an experiment run in the US airlock under coordination of the Columbus Control Centre (Col-CC). Besides that, there were many other experiments, such as EML, PK4, DOSIS and Meteron, and also the transition to new NASA tools (e.g. WebAD) was done in this period. Since the establishment of ESA's new setup in July 2015, Col-CC has been working together with all its partners to define the new interfaces, exploit new possibilities, and define in detail the tasks for the operations teams. Besides the ongoing work to monitor and command Columbus, support the ESA experiments on the ISS, as well as supporting the ESA astronaut himself, Col-CC is looking forward towards potential future tasks and challenges. Based on many years of experience in human space flight, an initial study was launched to investigate some of the challenges of human space flight activities beyond Earth orbit. One of these challenges is the delay of communication transmissions experienced over long distances. Until now, all our human space flight operations have been based on (near) real-time communications to monitor and control the spacecraft. This paper describes the results of our study investigating the necessary changes to current operations in the case of long-distance communications. Example procedures are assessed on their reliance on real-time communications and thus how current operations would be impacted by transmission delays. Methods are proposed to make the procedures tolerant to delays, and enable operations to use these procedures for deep space missions

Analysis of a Moon outpost for Mars enabling technologies through a Virtual Reality environment

The Moon is now being considered as the starting point for human exploration of the Solar System beyond low-Earth orbit. Many national space agencies are actively advocating to build up a lunar surface habitat capability starting from 2030 or earlier: according to ESA Technology Roadmaps for Exploration this should be the result of a broad international cooperation. Taking into account an incremental approach to reduce risks and costs of space missions, a lunar outpost can be considered as a test bed towards Mars, allowing to validate enabling technologies, such as water processing, waste management, power generation and storage, automation, robotics and human factors. Our natural satellite is rich in resources that could be used to pursue such a goal through a necessary assessment of ISRU techniques. The aim of this research is the analysis of a Moon outpost dedicated to the validation of enabling technologies for human space exploration. The main building blocks of the outpost are identified and feasible evolutionary scenarios are depicted, to highlight the incremental steps to build up the outpost. Main aspects that are dealt with include outpost location and architecture, as well as ISRU facilities, which in a far term future can help reduce the mass at launch, by producing hydrogen and oxygen for consumables, ECLSS, and propellant for Earth-Moon sorties and Mars journeys. A test outpost is implemented in a Virtual Reality (VR) environment as a first proof-of-concepts, where the elements are computer-based mock-ups. The VR facility has a first-person interactive perspective, allowing for specific in-depth analyses of ergonomics and operations. The feedbacks of these analyses are crucial to highlight requirements that might otherwise be overlooked, while their general outputs are fundamental to write down procedures. Moreover, the mimic of astronauts’ EVAs is useful for pre-flight training, but can also represent an additional tool for failures troubleshooting during the flight controllers’ nominal operations. Additionally, illumination maps have been obtained to study the light conditions, which are essential parameters to assess the base elements location. This unique simulation environment may offer the largest suite of benefits during the design and development phase, as it allows to design future systems to optimize operations, thus maximizing the mission’s scientific return, and to enhance the astronauts training, by saving time and cost. The paper describes how a virtual environment could help to design a Moon outpost for an incremental architecture strategy towards Mars missions