A Meta Archive Providing Unified Access to all Operational Data at the German Space Operations Center

Abstract

During the lifetime of a satellite mission all kind of data are produced. This does not only encompass science and housekeeping data, but also configuration data, design documents, operational notes, anomaly reports, to only name a few. One of the challenges during spacecraft operations is to find and correlate data of various sources in order to perform successful contingency analysis and recovery, long-term analysis and situational awareness. Collecting and consolidating data from different sources is the purpose of a distributed software system called “META archive”, which is developed and used at the German Space Operations Center (GSOC) at DLR in Oberpfaffenhofen. The system does not aim at replacing the various archives or document management systems already in place, but at providing a condensed and searchable view across the whole set of mission data. As such it is suitable for starting in-depth analyses as well as for providing situational awareness. This paper highlights the purpose of the META Archive, its design and concrete implementation at GSOC. It will be shown how META fits into the existing mission operations system and how it can be used by system engineers to ensure efficient spacecraft operations.