Advancing Space Mission Operations Best Practices between the Military and Civilian Communities

Abstract

As spacecraft operations continue to adapt to the fiscal austerity of the post 9/11 federal budget environment, the national security and civilian space operations communities are increasingly tasked with merging their respective operations in order to achieve greater efficiency with limited resources. Where once these two environments existed in closed, narrowly defined operational settings, we now find that these two elements of space operations must work interdependently to achieve greater commonality across multiple programs. Both communities have developed distinctly different concepts of spacecraft operations, and normalizing these operations to allow cross-mission and intra-mission cooperation will be a key component in the continued success of Department of Defense (DOD) space missions. While there are necessarily distinct differences between the civilian and DOD space missions, commonalities exist as well. This paper will discuss the various ways in which the civilian and DOD space mission overlap in their capabilities, and where these capabilities can be effectively managed in order to increase operational efficiency and reduced operations cost. By doing so, the DOD and civilian space operations communities may be able to increase cooperation between programs, thereby enhancing mission capability while continuing to keep operations costs within budget.