Towards Unified Monitoring of Spacecrafts

Abstract

This paper presents a new philosophy in monitoring spacecrafts: the unification of the various kinds of monitoring techniques used during the different life cycle phases of a spacecraft. After looking at the current state of the art in monitoring spacecrafts and identifying the challenges which arise from improving the situation, the new idea of Unified Monitoring will be presented as a possible solution. The technical realization of this idea will take place by the development of the Monitoring Framework. This framework was first implemented as a prototype and tested on breadboards in DLR’s laboratories. As a second step the framework was implemented as part of the flight software of the first satellite of the DLR compact satellite series.