Reusable Toolset for an Easy-to-build Payload Ground Segment

Abstract

For years, scientific laboratories have proposed to the French Space Agency (CNES) various scientific space experiments in many different fields such as astrophysics, astronomy, microgravity, environment and earth sciences. Three main entities are involved in a space mission: the space segment, with satellite and scientific payload, the ground stations and control centre, and the payload ground segment with end users. To reduce the cost of the access to space and thus to favour the emergence of new missions, CNES endeavours to develop generic systems in order to make available to the space community an access to space with reduced delay and cost. That is why CNES decided in 1996 to develop the Proteus mini-satellite series to meet the needs for 500/700 kg satellites on low orbits. Two years later, the development of MYRIADE was decided, aimed at satellite having a typical mass between 100 and 150 kg. A new stations network in currently under development with X/S band stations around the world to improve performances while the Control Centre has also been renewed. MIGS (Microsatellite Ground Segment) is a multi missions centre able to host up to 7 satellites at the same time. Automatic services allow limited human resources to supervise operations. In this context, to benefit from a full generic solution, the need for a reusable payload ground system becomes obvious. Therefore, to reduce scientific laboratories workload, CNES has been developing generic tools in order to fulfil the main functions of a scientific payload ground segment. As a result, the tools being already qualified by previous missions, the validation part is reduced, reliability is improved and operations are facilitated. This paper aims at showing the payload ground system as a fully part of the whole system, and the way to facilitate the whole process of development. In a first part, the architecture of a payload ground system is analysed focussing on the invariants in the main functions and operational concepts. In a second part, a description of the main tools is given, emphasizing improvements in flexibility, operations as well as efficiency in validation process. Eventually, two very different instances are presented in a third part, with: TARANIS, a micro satellite of the CNES MYRIADE series designed to detect and study different phenomena associated to atmospheric storms,