JAC software which is not a classical Flight Dynamics software, its MMI is designed to be very quickly taken over (by teams not using it on daily basis) while also offering all the expertise levels required by the Middle Man team. JAC is used by CAESAR on-call team and all FD teams who subscribed to CAESAR. JAC is also distributed by CNES and therefore already used by some operational teams for Conjunction Assessment. –
Keywords: Conjunction Assessment
Abstract:
Conjunction Messages (CM) provided by JSpOC are complete and valuable data to evaluate the level of risk of conjunctions, decide and choose avoidance actions. Nevertheless, conjunction assessment remains a difficult task which requires Middle Man between the CM provider (JSpOC) and Owner/Operators. Operational collision threat characterization is now an essential component of space mission operations. Most spacecraft operators have some sort of a process to evaluate and mitigate high-risk conjunction events. As the size of the space object catalog increases, satellite operators will be faced with more conjunction events to evaluate. Thus more sophisticated collision threat characterization and collision avoidance strategies must be implemented thought Middle Man entities.
CAESAR (Conjunction Analysis and Evaluation Service, Alerts and Recommendations) is the French Middle Man. CAESAR relies on a collaborative work environment between all members of CAESAR team and its subscribers. For CAESAR, the collaborative work environment is based on JAC software and a dedicated secure webserver SpOD Space Operational Data. JAC software is not the Main Flight Dynamics (FD) software used by CAESAR team, but it is a light friendly CM dedicated software to be used on a laptop by on-call teams or support dialogue between Middle Man and FD teams. The dedicated secure webserver is a key element to share data and information between actors.
This paper presents the main feedbacks from CAESAR team operational experience with regards to its collaborative work environment components: – JAC software which is not a classical Flight Dynamics software, its MMI is designed to be very quickly taken over (by teams not using it on daily basis) while also offering all the expertise levels required by the Middle Man team. JAC is used by CAESAR on-call team and all FD teams who subscribed to CAESAR. JAC is also distributed by CNES and therefore already used by some operational teams for Conjunction Assessment. – The secure webserver dedicated to CAESAR, SpOD, is used to offer operational security in combination with functions provided by JAC. For instance, JAC manages Team data such as operational procedures, templates, input data for analysis and so on. It garantees that each member of the operational team always uses the common last version of the operational procedures, templates or input data.
Collaborative work environment for Conjunction Assessment is essential to secure operations. CAESAR organization has been enriched and secured thanks to its declination of a collaborative work environment and is a concrete example of benefits in terms of security that can be achieved thanks to it.
Date of Conference: September 15-18, 2015
Track: Space Situational Awareness