Operating and Managing a Backup Control Center

Due to the criticality of continuous mission operations, some control centers must plan for alternate locations in the event an emergency shuts down the primary control center. Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas is the Mission Control Center (MCC) for the International Space Station (ISS). Due to Houston s proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, JSC is prone to threats from hurricanes which could cause flooding, wind damage, and electrical outages to the buildings supporting the MCC. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) has the capability to be the Backup Control Center for the ISS if the situation is needed. While the MSFC Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) does house the BCC, the prime customer and operator of the ISS is still the JSC flight operations team. To satisfy the customer and maintain continuous mission operations, the BCC has critical infrastructure that hosts ISS ground systems and flight operations equipment that mirrors the prime mission control facility. However, a complete duplicate of Mission Control Center in another remote location is very expensive to recreate. The HOSC has infrastructure and services that MCC utilized for its backup control center to reduce the costs of a somewhat redundant service. While labor talents are equivalent, experiences are not. Certain operations are maintained in a redundant mode, while others are simply maintained as single string with adequate sparing levels of equipment. Personnel at the BCC facility must be trained and certified to an adequate level on primary MCC systems. Negotiations with the customer were done to match requirements with existing capabilities, and to prioritize resources for appropriate level of service. Because some of these systems are shared, an activation of the backup control center will cause a suspension of scheduled HOSC activities that may share resources needed by the BCC. For example, the MCC is monitoring a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. As the threat to MCC increases, HOSC must begin a phased activation of the BCC, while working resource conflicts with normal HOSC activities. In a long duration outage to the MCC, this could cause serious impacts to the BCC host facility s primary mission support activities. This management of a BCC is worked based on customer expectations and negotiations done before emergencies occur. I

Astronomical Distance Determination in the Space Age: Secondary Distance Indicators

The formal division of the distance indicators into primary and secondary leads to difficulties in description of methods which can actually be used in two ways: with, and without the support of the other methods for scaling. Thus instead of concentrating on the scaling requirement we concentrate on all methods of distance determination to extragalactic sources which are designated, at least formally, to use for individual sources. Among those, the Supernovae Ia is clearly the leader due to its enormous success in determination of the expansion rate of the Universe. However, new methods are rapidly developing, and there is also a progress in more traditional methods. We give a general overview of the methods but we mostly concentrate on the most recent developments in each field, and future expectations. © 2018, The Author(s)

Trauma and post traumatic growth in young survivors of a terrorist attack: An experiential account of supportive interventions in a tertiary care hospital in Pakistan

In the winter of 2014, four terrorists attacked a school in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), resulting in more than a hundred students’ death. Twenty-two survivors (aged 10–18 years) with physical injuries were admitted to a private hospital in Karachi for further surgical and psychological interventions. The aim of this paper is to share a retrospective experiential account of a trauma management plan, based on the bio-psycho-socio-spiritual model for young survivors of terrorism. In biological management, children with hyper-arousal symptoms and sleep disturbances were started on Prazosin and those meeting criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders were started on Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. The Psychosocial interventions included individual therapy, physical therapy, family education, and music groups. Children and their families were also encouraged to draw on their religious support. At the time of discharge, these children were evaluated through clinical interview to assess for improvement. A massive decrease in their hyper-arousal symptoms was seen as evidenced by improvements in their sleeping patterns, mood and behaviour. Moreover, signs of psychosocial development based on the principles of Post Traumatic Growth were visible. Our main limitations were the short period of time and a lack of follow up opportunity. However, this framework provides a basis to establish trauma services at tertiary care hospitals in developing countries like Pakistan where access to overall health care is limited and specifically psychiatric care is lacking in health care institutes