Development of a Comprehensive Mission Operations System Designed to Operate Multiple Small Satellites

Development of a Comprehensive Mission Operations System Designed to Operate Multiple Small Satellites

The Hawaii Space Flight Laboratory (HSFL) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, in collaboration with NASA Ames Research Center (ARC), is developing COSMOS (Comprehensive Open-architecture Space Mission Operations System), a set of software tools and hardware that is designed to primarily support the development and operations of one or more small spacecraft. COSMOS will be particularly suited for organizations with limited development and operations budget, such as universities. COSMOS is a suite of software and hardware tools (including external modules) that enables the operations team to interface with the spacecraft, ground control network, payload and other customers in order to perform the mission operations functions including mission planning and scheduling; contact operations; data management and analysis; simulations (including the operational testbed); ground network control; payload operations; flight dynamics; and system management. COSMOS is being designed to easily be adapted for new spacecraft or installation in new mission operations centers (MOCs). Some of the basic elements of COSMOS have been developed at least to the prototype stage, while other elements are still in the conceptual stage. The COSMOS tools will initially be installed in the HSFL and ARC MOCs and used in support of three of their small satellites.