Session
Technical Session II: Mission Operations
Abstract
The Thermosphere • Ionosphere • Mesosphere • Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) program, being developed at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA's Space Physics Division, is the first in mission in the Solar Connections program. The TIMED mission, in its present form, was engineered to reduce life cycle costs. This paper describes the operations concept planned for TIMED and shows how this novel approach to operations has resulted in a lower overall cost. TIMED relies on a combination of simplified operations, enhanced automation, and event-based commanding to provide a mission operations system that is less expensive to operate, yet more responsive to the Principal Investigators.
The Engineering of Cost Efficient Operations
The Thermosphere • Ionosphere • Mesosphere • Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) program, being developed at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA's Space Physics Division, is the first in mission in the Solar Connections program. The TIMED mission, in its present form, was engineered to reduce life cycle costs. This paper describes the operations concept planned for TIMED and shows how this novel approach to operations has resulted in a lower overall cost. TIMED relies on a combination of simplified operations, enhanced automation, and event-based commanding to provide a mission operations system that is less expensive to operate, yet more responsive to the Principal Investigators.
