LUNA - Considerations For An European Ground Segment for ESA's and DLR's Test Bed For Exploration

Kurzfassung

The ESA GSP study “LUNA 2015” identified the need for a large-area lunar testbed facility and analogue habitat in Europe: As a result, the LUNA – European Exploration Laboratory project was initiated by the European Astronaut Centre (EAC). After some reiteration, ESA and DLR in September 2018 agreed on a joint project the LUNA (formerly LUNA 2.0). This increased version is planned as an industrial hall construction on DLR premises at Cologne next to and connected with EAC. Participating parties are ESA-EAC, DLR’s Institute of Space Operations and Astronaut Training with its departments German Space Operations Center (GSOC) at Oberpfaffenhofen and the Microgravity User Support Center (MUSC) and the Institute of Aerospace Medicine at Cologne. While the requirements definition for the construction are being completed, the planning and design for the supporting Ground Segment is on-going. This paper summarizes the considerations for the Ground Segment so far and will explain and elaborate on ideas behind the requirements. The Ground Segment will consist of the LUNA internal systems, which will serve IT, Voice, Video, Monitoring, Data, and Archive services for international users. The systems must be built in a flexible manner to allow interconnection of user systems, easy integration of additional simulation facilities, as well as functioning as a test bed for future system development e.g. for ESA’s EGS-CC M&C system. In addition to on-line systems the LUNA needs to provide off-line systems to enable user data exchanges and collaboration tools with their home bases in parallel to running simulations. The second part of the Ground Segment will be a European/International network connecting the various relevant facilities allowing easy on-line and off-line access of remote users and user centers. As future exploration missions are likely to be operated decentralized by a network of various control/expert centers, this network will play an important part towards supporting simulation activities and related scenarios. Although the initial network will be established as a bare-bone minimum, it shall be scalable for possible future expansion scenarios. This paper will elaborate on the projected expansion. The systems shall incorporate current state-of-the-art as well as future technologies but will also make use of experience gained of Columbus and ISS operations from EAC and GSOC, which hosts the Columbus Control Center. Furthermore, it is planned to collaborate whenever feasible and reasonable with existing systems to employ existing knowledge and facilitate knowledge transition from ISS operations to future ESA and DLR missions.