Three (now four) years into operations for a satellite health monitoring system and its evolution

Abstract

Responding to the needs of satellite operators, a modern data visualisation and health monitoring system has been developed at the DLR - German Space Operations Center (GSOC). The web application for data visualisation and analysis (ViDA), which allows fast and interactive long-term telemetry data exploration, has been used operationally at GSOC since 2021. Since then, it has seen an ever-increasing success, with a larger user base and the adoption by additional space missions. The ViDA ecosystem includes a machine-learning based novelty detection service, called ATHMoS, which performs the automatic detection of abnormal behaviour in telemetry data. ATHMoS has been used operationally since 2022, assisting the satellite operators in their routine subsystem checks. This paper presents the evolution of the ViDA ecosystem in the past four years of operations, describing how the needs and feedback of the operators have been shaping the development of the tool, from the inclusion of more mission's data, to the addition of new features and capabilities, as well as the improvement of the novelty detection and result interpretability. As ViDA keeps growing and evolving, the roadmap for the future is also showcased.