5 Years experience of Columbus Ground Segment Operations

Kurzfassung

The Columbus Ground segment is a very complex system with connections to USA (NASA), Russia (RSA), ATV-CC and many user centers across Europe. Because of the many delays in the launch of the Columbus module to the ISS, the ground segment was used to support other activities between the ISS and centers in Europe, like the interim utilization, Eneide and Astrolab missions, among parallel activities such as simulations. This decision provided a good opportunity to test the systems and be prepared for the Columbus mission. On the other side now, after 2 years of Columbus operations, Col-CC is facing the issues that almost all the subsystems are running out of maintenance contracts, and in addition, the hardware and operating systems are aging. Some of the subsystems need an urgent update in order to ensure the required support to Columbus operations. That results in a new challenge of testing in parallel the new systems without affecting operations. It is important to note that Col-CC does not have a testing facility for most of the subsystem and is under a very complicated decision-making and financial structure that makes the maintenance of the current functionalities extremely complex. All of these factors combined with the budget and man power limitations makes the successful short history of the operations and the already start of the parallel migration an interesting defiance.