Todays post was contributed by Cluster Spacecraft Operations Manager Bruno Sousa. Follow the mission in Twitter by means of @esa_cluster.
Every extension of the mission up to now has actually been carefully planned to address interesting and brand-new science targets. It appears almost paradoxical that the older the spacecraft, and the less the resources readily available to keep the mission flying, the more information are produced. It appears as though the objective ages like port white wine: the older, the much better.
The four Cluster satellites are now old adequate to vote and have a motorists license in the majority of countries of the world, in spite of the reality that they have, in reality, been happily driving themselves well above a lot of countries for the last 18 years.
Todays post was contributed by Cluster Spacecraft Operations Manager Bruno Sousa. On 11 January, the UKs Royal Astronomical Society awarded its 2019 Group Achievement Award to the Cluster Science and Operations Teams. Follow the mission in Twitter by means of @esa_cluster.
Cluster images the Earth South pole (South Africa shows up between the clouds) with the VMC separation camera Credit: ESA
Beginnings
The Cluster objective left to a really rough start in 1996, with the first quartet being ruined along with their rocket throughout the not successful Ariane 5 maiden flight from Kourou, in French Guiana. After being reconstructed and re-launched, in the summer season of 2000, the satellites have gone on to surpass everyones most optimistic predictions, and they continue to produce the most remarkable observations and data on the fundamental physics of the area between the Sun and Earth.
The rate of scientific publications from Cluster data has not significantly reduced for many years and in fact, with the launch of more recent objectives like NASAs Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) objective, the Van Allen Probes objective and Themis, or Chinas Double Star, Clusters importance has, if anything, only end up being more crucial.
From Clusters unique viewpoint, it is possible today to do complementary science observations together with all these other missions, enhancing the quality of the data, and the quality of outcomes for all.
Aging like port red wine
If there is one feature that can define the Science Operations Workgroup of Cluster, its that they never ever felt contented or happy to just do more of the very same. Every extension of the mission already has actually been thoroughly prepared to deal with new and interesting science targets. And from the objective operations side, all our efforts have actually been towards making sure the success of those projects by carefully managing flight control obstacles and optimising resources..
It appears almost paradoxical that the older the spacecraft, and the fewer the resources available to keep the objective flying, the more information are produced. 2018 was the year the mission produced the largest-ever volume of information with the least quantity of ground-station tracking time, one of the inescapable costs to flying any objective. It seems as though the mission ages like port wine: the older, the much better.
Orbital evolution– steady modifications in the 4 satellites pathways around Earth– has actually been a significant contribution to this, and with the apogee (the point in a satellites orbit when it is greatest above Earth) at its lowest, we have benefitted from a favourable setup. In addition, continuous improvement of our weekly planning and scheduling coupled with innovative strategies like Multiple Satellite per Aperture (enabling two or more satellites to be tracked at the same time with the very same ground station– we are the very first mission to utilize it consistently at ESA), and much better management of resources, has actually allowed for additional optimisation.
From surviving to prospering.
From 2008 to 2012, the laws of physics and celestial mechanics determined that the spacecraft were experiencing a nasty dip into the Van Allen belts, tyre-shaped belts of extremely energetic electrons and protons that are caught by Earths electromagnetic field. This caused solar selection destruction, leading to power loss and, ultimately, the on-board batteries stopped working and had to be completely closed down. The loss of power implied that heating had to be sparse and the high-power amplifier needed to be compromised, therefore leading to an increase in the time required for downloading data.
In 2011, the spacecraft engineers dealt with a tiring year with nearly uninterrupted eclipses (when our satellites get no sunlight so create no power) each and every single orbit, requiring massive effort to handle powering down and after that changing on and reconfiguring everything back to full functional status. With all hands offered doing shifts to deal with the work, little time was left to implement improvements.
But need is the mom of imagination and quickly the engineers got around to automating a number of these command-intensive tasks. Even more, simplifications have meant that we have actually decreased the time required to recover the four spacecraft from 4 to one hour per spacecraft. Today, when whatever goes smoothly, which is practically constantly, we can finish the task in two hours doing a pair of spacecraft at one time, requiring just four or five mouse clicks..
Automation and optimisation.
The last 7 years have actually seen Cluster modification from an objective that had actually been battling against difficulty to make it through, to a mission at the leading edge of optimisation and automation of operations. This has actually been in great step possible due to a team of smart and well-practiced engineers, who were currently extremely motivated to achieve that improvement, as a result of a culture and approach put in location by my predecessor, Jürgen Volpp.
With the advent of automation and the pressure to optimise resources, less manual labor has led, for many years, to a decrease in the size of the group available to perform real-time operations. From a preliminary pool of nine spacecraft controllers covering 24 hrs/day, year-round operations in the control room plus three experts to cover our database management and mission-planning requirements, we have gradually however methodically lowered to 4 spacecraft controllers and no experts, with part of the work simplified, automated or shared amongst the also-trimmed swimming pool of spacecraft operations engineers, which now totals 6, including the Spacecraft Operations Manager.
With the reduction in staffing, we improved shift and station preparation to optimise the junction of controllers and ground contacts. Weve likewise extended automation to enable hands-off operations when no staffing of the consoles was possible. Automation has actually likewise been progressively built-in to some of our reoccurring abnormality signals, whose signature we can recognize, and therefore offer a organized and timely reaction.
The initial Clusterweb timeline still greatly in use to support station preparation Credit: ESA.
Advanced tools.
Clusterweb has been one of the tools emerging from the imagination and abilities of the Cluster group that has assisted to considerably improve preparation and fleet supervision. It began its advancement in 2009.
In 2016, the group chose for a major re-engineering of the tool, resulting in a new, contemporary and highly configurable timeline plotting engine, now called OPSWEB, presently in use by five other groups.
Operations teams have constantly prototyped any little tools they required. What makes this advancement stick out is the scale and scope of development accomplished. It wasnt simply another tool carried out in Excel or Java by a student; instead, an expert method was utilized, making full use of Scrum, a very iterative development approach, integrated with enlarging the advancement team through little voluntary contributions across the organisation (at its peak, seven people were dealing with it all at once) and supported by a modern development and combination environment, a flexible and modular architecture and a contemporary innovation stack. The result so far attained, is, by all requirements, amazing and on par with the very best to be discovered in market.
The brand-new OPSWEB timeline engine as set up for Cluster Credit: ESA.
Breeding proficiency.
Engineers who have actually dealt with Cluster operations, either due to the fact that they have actually needed to handle the intricate eclipse operations or because they have had to assist figure out the radiation- and age-related devices problems, have actually traditionally ended up being extremely comfortable dealing directly with the spacecraft, and have evoled into experts who take on issues in an autonomous and accountable way. They have actually also become really pro-active in improving the total operations setup, whether by enhancing flight procedures, automation scripts or releasing brand-new tools.
This has actually indicated that, throughout the years, Cluster operations alumni have actually discovered their method into the newest and most complicated objectives zipped ESA at the ESOC objective control centre, like Bepi, ExoMars and Juice. A number of have likewise discovered their way into key positions at Eumetsat and in new space business.
Cluster has become a school for operations at ESOC, and managing the turnover of the group and the proliferation of the required skills, experience and mind-set has been a significant difficulty. At the exact same time, we continue aiming to produce ever larger and more total sets of science data.
It is, therefore, perhaps no huge wonder that previously this month, the UKs Royal Astronomical Society, when honouring the remarkable clinical output of this mission, also emphasised the function of operations in the societys recent statement of the 2019 Group Achievement Award to the Cluster objective.
An objective that not so long back was at danger of being stopped has actually rather continued shining as a foundation data supplier for the geophysics community and a good example for effective and efficient mission operations
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