Columbus Operations

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 Attached Pressurized Module (APM) - Columbus 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 Space Operations Center (GSOC) will provide facilities and manpower to the International Space Station Program within the framework of the European Space Agency’s Columbus project. The Col -CC is the main control centre for Columbus and will receive all system downlink telemetry, uplink all system commands and is the source/destination for all system file transfers to/from the Columbus. The so called Columbus Flight Control Team has been designated in order to address the operations Preparation and Planning Support, operations Execution (including Activation and Checkout during Flight 1-E), Increment-Preparation and Post-Operations Evaluation activities, which are needed to conduct safe, sustained and efficient Columbus mission operations during its orbital life. Also this article provides the Col-CC mission description, objectives, constraints and an overview of the mission phases, interfaces to other centers, organizations and communications networks and a description of the operations interfaces. A description of the specified Columbus software system’s environment, showing the onboard data management and the interface between flight subsystems (e.g. Communication and Data Management Subsystems) like data acquisition and distribution, telecommunication support, data management environment for applications in support of system and mission management is also given.