Columbus Operations Concept-Execution, Routing and Mangement of Data

Abstract

The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest space program that has ever been undertaken on the basis of international cooperation (United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and Europe). Europe is responsible for two key station elements, which are the Columbus Module and the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). The purpose of this paper is to give an overview about the Columbus operations concept for performing the ground and flight control tasks assigned to the Columbus Control Center (Col-CC). DLR´s German Operations Center (GSOC) will provide facilities and manpower to the International Space Station Program within the framework of the European Space Agencys Columbus project. The Col-CC is the main control centre responsible for the columbus Downlink telemetry, uplink commands and all system file transfers as well as data distribution to the User (Experimenter) Community located throughout EUrope. The so called Columbus Flight Control Team (FCT) has been designated for addressing the operations Preparation and Planning Support, operations Execution (including Activation and Checkout during Flight !-E), Increment-Preparation and Post-Operations Evalutation activities, which are needed to conduct safe, sustained and productive mission operations. This paper may be divided into three main parts based on the following baselines: - Operations Execution - Routing of Data - On board Data Management The first part contains a description of the system monitoring and control activities performed by the Col-CC during nominal operations period. the flight control procedures used by the FCT to perform the activation and checkout of the module will also be mentioned. An overview of the data links used between Columbus (via ISS) and Col-CC will be presented in the second part of the paper.