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Adapting Columbus Operations and Providing a Basis for Future Endeavours

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Adapting Columbus Operations and Providing a Basis for Future Endeavours IAC-16,B3.4-B6.5,2 Adapting Columbus Operations and Providing a Basis for Future Endeavours J. M. Bach*, D. Sabath*, G. Söllner*, F. Bender+ * DLR, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany + Technische Universität München, Lehrstuhl für Raumfahrttechnik 67th International Astronautical Congress, 26 – 30 September 2016 Guadalajara, Mexico For permission to copy or republish, contact the International Astronautical Federation 3-5 Rue Mario-Nikis, 75015 Paris, France IAC-16,B3.4-B6.5,2 CONSOLIDATING COLUMBUS OPERATIONS AND LOOKING FOR NEW FRONTIERS Author J. M. Bach, DLR, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, [email protected] Co-Authors D. Sabath, DLR, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, [email protected] G. Söllner, DLR, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, [email protected] F. Bender, Technische Universität München, Lehrstuhl für Raumfahrttechnik, [email protected] ABSTRACT On 15th December 2015, Timothy Peake – the 4th ESA astronaut in 20 months – headed into orbit for a 6-month stay on the ISS. The British astronaut's “Principia” mission holds many interesting tasks, not only for Tim Peake himself (he performed an EVA on 15th January 2016) but also for the teams on the ground. One of the most exciting activities was the second session of the Airway Monitoring experiment, which again included an experiment run in the US airlock under coordination of the Columbus Control Centre (Col-CC). Besides that, there were many other experiments, such as EML, PK4, DOSIS and Meteron, and also the transition to new NASA tools (e.g. WebAD) was done in this period. Since the establishment of ESA's new setup in July 2015, Col-CC has been working together with all its partners to define the new interfaces, exploit new possibilities, and define in detail the tasks for the operations teams. Besides the ongoing work to monitor and command Columbus, support the ESA experiments on the ISS, as well as supporting the ESA astronaut himself, Col-CC is looking forward towards potential future tasks and challenges. Based on many years of experience in human space flight, an initial study was launched to investigate some of the challenges of human space flight activities beyond Earth orbit. One of these challenges is the delay of communication transmissions experienced over long distances. Until now, all our human space flight operations have been based on (near) real-time communications to monitor and control the spacecraft. This paper describes the results of our study investigating the necessary changes to current operations in the case of long-distance communications. Example procedures are assessed on their reliance on real-time communications and thus how current operations would be impacted by transmission delays. Methods are proposed to make the procedures tolerant to delays, and enable operations to use these procedures for deep space missions. Introduction Thomas Pesquet is already approaching and will The “Principia” mission of Timothy Peake started in start in December 2016. December 2015 and was the final event in the row Based on the long experience of DLR’s German of ESA astronauts in the years 2014 to 2016. Space Operations Centre(GSOC) in manned Starting with the German ESA astronaut, space operations, in 2005 the Eneide Mission and Alexander Gerst in May 2014, the almost continuous stay of ESA astronauts on-board ISS _________________________ was continued by Samantha Cristoforetti in Copyright 2016 by Jan Marius Bach. Published by the December 2014 and Andreas Mogensen in IAF, with permission and released to the IAF to publish in September 2015. While the “Principia” mission has all forms. just ended in June 2016, the next mission with 2 in 2006 the support of the Astrolab mission with worked outside the ISS together with Tim Kopra Thomas Reiter (see [1] and [2]) could be (see Fig. 2). He performed the EVA on 15 January performed successfully. The Interim Utilization 2016 replacing a failed power regulator and Phase was done in parallel to setting up Col-CC installing some cabling. The EVA was shortened ([3] to [5]) for the later Columbus operations. Since due to problems with Tim Kopra’s EVA suit. February 2008, when Col-CC started its Columbus operations (see [6] to [14] and [13] to [14]), all further missions and increments have been prepared and supported successfully. Also, the new setup with split responsibilities among several services and new interfaces resulted in more efficient operations of Columbus and the payloads. With this experience, it will allow operating Columbus until at least 2024, assuming that the boundary conditions will not change (see [12]). In parallel to the standard operations tasks, the Col-CC Flight Control Team (FCT) is looking towards the future and is conducting preliminary investigations on selected aspects of future deep space missions. In the study [15], modifications to operations have been analysed when boundary conditions change from (near) real-time to long- distance communications. The focus was put on quantifying the effect of the signal propagation delay on procedure execution. European Astronauts on ISS Having the fourth ESA astronaut in a short timeframe on-board ISS was one of the main driver of Increment 45/46. Timothy Peake started his “PRINCIPIA” mission on 15 December 2015 launching from Baikonur in Kazakhstan together Fig. 2: Tim Peake during his EVA with Roscosmos cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and (Photo: NASA) NASA astronaut Tim Kopra. After four orbits, the Soyuz capsule docked to the ISS and the three Among many other experiments, Tim Peake crewmates could enter the ISS on the same day performed the Airway Monitoring experiment in the (see Fig. 1). US Airlock under reduced pressure together with Tim Kopra. The scientific goal of ESA’s Airway Monitoring experiment is to investigate how space flight affects lung health by measuring exhaled nitric oxide (NO) levels as evidence of airway inflammation. Previous research indicates that humans in space are prone to airway inflammation due to the increased risk of inhalation of dust and other free-floating particles as described in [14]. After preparing the experimental setup in the US Airlock, Tim Peake and Tim Kopra performed the experiment under reduced atmospheric pressure on 25 February 2016 (see Fig. 3). Thanks to the lessons learned which have been implemented Fig. 1: Tim Peake arrives at the ISS (Photo: NASA) since the last session in 2015, the experiment could be performed very smoothly. Already four weeks after his arrival at the ISS, ESA astronaut Tim Peake performed his first EVA and 3 stand-alone solution. This allows the use of a unified and integrated system with a strong backing in development. In [14], the planned transition schedule in the timeframe until September 2016 described the new system to be ready for operational usage in increment 49/50. Because of some problems with the OPDCS end of 2015, the transition schedule has been advanced by 6 months to December 2015. As the teams have been trained for WebAD until then, it was possible to substitute OPDCS by WebAD already at the start of Increment 47/48. Hence, a transition procedure was developed and some tests were performed in the next weeks to ensure a Fig. 3: Tim Peake performing the Airway smooth transition in early 2016. In January 2016, Monitoring experiment in the Airlock the OPDCS database was frozen for some days (Photo: NASA) and the whole database content of the OPDCS Tim Peake returned to Earth with Soyuz 45S on was transferred to WebAD and cross-checked for 18 June 2016 with cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko transfer flaws. After confirmation of a good and astronaut Tim Kopra after working on-board transition of the data to the new tool, WebAD has the ISS during Increments 46 and 47. been used in operations by the ESA team from the start of Increment 47/48 onwards. On the New Interfaces, new Tools and operations side, OPDCS was retired a few weeks Standard Operations afterwards, when the new tool was judged fully reliable for operations. In [13], the new operations setup implemented in January 2014 is described. Meanwhile this setup In addition to the scheduled updates, the has been fully implemented and experience during Columbus FCT has to deal with unplanned on- three ESA long-term missions has been gained. board events. In July 2016, one of the CWSA (Columbus Water Separator Assembly) went off The infrastructure upgrade of the Col-CC Ground and a switch-over to the second unit had to be Segment has been finalized in the last year. The performed. Meanwhile, the first unit is up again but virtualization of server hardware was mostly done it is intended to replace it by a new unit, which will by the Col-CC Ground segment team and offers on be delivered by the end of 2016. the one side improvement of server handling and associated hardware and on the other side makes Investigations on Operations in Deep Space control room swaps easier than before. Details on the virtualization at Col-CC can be found in [16] One major challenge of manned deep-space flight and [17]. is the communication signal delay experienced over long distances. Until today, all human space In Spring 2016, the first commissioning phase of flight operations have been based on real-time the new on-board Solid State Drives (SSD) was communications to monitor and control spacecraft. performed. The first tests show good performance In the future, missions well beyond Earth’s vicinity of the new subsystem which will improve the are anticipated, which will result in the need for handling of large on-board recorded video files. delay-tolerant operations. Also in 2014, NASA started to introduce a new So far, only robotic missions have been conducted planning suite called OPTIMIS, consisting of in deep space with significant delays in SCORE, WebAD and Viewer.
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