System and technologies utilized in the first telescience experiment during Texus 23 mission

Abstract

Texus 23 mission included a fluid dynamic experiment on the oscillatory Marangoni flow. The experiment was successfully performed on board the Texus sounding rocket (launched at Kiruna - Sweden) using TEM-06/4 module. It was fully controlled by the PI (Prof. Monti) directly from the Italian Control Center at Fucino. This new operative mode has been developed on Texus to test and to assess the principal technical aspects, and to demonstrate the validity and the usefulness mainly in the perspective of Columbus utilization. The paper illustrates the different technological aspects and the systems/equipment integrated and realized for the experiment control. In the first part the different possible H W configurations for the monitoring and control, identified by the research team, are discussed and compared with the selected architecture and subsystems, whose main features and limits are reported. The relevant aspects of the H W configuration include: the Control Work Stations architecture, the I O channels used for the selection, transmission and reception of data and commands, the sub-systems manufactured to improve the system reliability and safety level in the experiment operations. The second part deals with the communication network used for transmission between Sweden and Italy of experimental data, facility status, voice, video images, and commands. The role played by the S W for a complete, comprehensible presentation of the many parameters relevant for the experiment control is discussed in the third part. The S W , developed by the team, carried out different functions, as data selection and acquisition, graphic visualization, management of data/commands communication, data elaboration, facility/links monitoring, and decisional support to PI. In particular the experience acquired during this experiment has demonstrated the importance and usefulness of the decisional support, conceived to help the PI at the branch points. Finally the paper summarizes the experiment execution, the behaviour of the different sub-systems and the improvements obtained with respect to previous Texus experiences.