INTO THE 21ST CENTURY : A FUTURISTIC LOOK AT MISSION
CONTROL AND OPERATIONS IN THE NEXT CENTURY.
Martin Symonds* & Christian Müller**
*. Computer Resources International A/S (CRI), Bregnerødvej 144, 3460 Birkerød, Denmark.
Fax: +45 4582 2620, E-Mail: msy@nov.cri.dk
**. Computer Resources International GmbH (CRI), Lyoner Stern, Hahnstraße 70,
60528 Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Fax: +49 696 668329
ABSTRACT: This paper will look at the process of evolution that has occurred during the last twenty years which has led to the systems currently in operation and under development. Based upon this experience and with an idea of the current and emerging trends in the Space Industry and the increasingly rapid development of newer technology, it is possible to put together a discussion on where this may be leading. This paper will seek to focus on some of the following issues:
This paper is essentially an attempt to gaze into a crystal ball to see what the future may bring in the area of mission control and operations.
Over the last 20 years, access to and use of Space has changed and increased dramatically. After man landed on the moon, the Space race to a large extent scaled down and the focus moved closer to Earth. Recent years have seen Space becoming accessible to many more nations and the commercialisation of Space in areas such as telecommunications and earth observation are now well advanced with many nations either having their own, or contributing to, commercial missions. Scientific and Deep Space missions however, still tend to remain the preserve of the international agencies such as ESA and NASA, while increasingly ambitious projects tend to require more sophisticated technology to support them as well as substantial international technological and financial co-operation in order to guarantee success.
This paper will attempt to make a flying visit into the future of the early 21st century, based on the progress and events of the last decades of this Century
Over the last 20 years the rate of progress in all areas of technology has accelerated considerably. Space has been no exception, and since Gargarin first orbited the earth in 1961 the development of Space as part of the Earth's environment, has accelerated. Man is already looking towards the next steps to take such as returning to the moon, or travelling even further afield to places such as Mars and Saturn.
Mission Control systems today are a far cry from those of the early 1960's. Since then, systems of many dumb terminals connected to a single powerful computer, have progressed to where now, many powerful networked computers form a single system of a capacity many times that of the earlier systems. Today's systems are extremely reliable with very high availability. Their complexity provides many features which only five or ten years ago were unthinkable. There seems to be no reason for this exponential growth to slow. In Space, many missions now have considerably longer lifetimes and are often seen to exceed their original expectations.
There have been many notable Space achievements in recent years, the Space Shuttle, the MIR Space Station, the Giotto mission, and the Galileo mission to name but a few. All represent milestones of Mankind's achievement in Space. Whilst perhaps less glamorous missions than some of the heady days of the Cold War and Space Race, they are nevertheless outstanding achievements in their own right and stand proud along with the many other missions of recent years.
Another significant change over recent years is the increased commercialisation and ease of access to Space. This is particularly true in the areas of communication, remote sensing and microgravity. Some 10 years ago these were areas that were really just leaving the research and experimental stages and whilst research continues, the key challenges of today and tomorrow lie with exploiting the newer and more experimental technologies.
Today there are many more requests for the funding of scientific and experimental missions than can ever hope to be accommodated by the current level of funding available to the international bodies and agencies. However there is evidence that access to Space is becoming much cheaper and the opportunities for access are increasing for a larger number of countries and organisations. With the cheaper and more sophisticated technology now available, Space missions have also become more sophisticated in themselves. This in turn has lead to more sophisticated demands on the mission control systems and operations. It is now becoming more financially feasible for individual organisations to themselves invest in Space technology and missions and as overall costs drop, then so will this trend increase.
Manned Space missions are today relatively commonplace. The MIR Space station has been inhabited for many years and Space Shuttle flights no longer generate the media and public interest they once did, as they become the workhorses of Space.
Mission Control and Operations are no longer the preserve of the larger and wealthier Space agencies. Many smaller nations now launch and/or control Space missions for their own purposes, as well as performing these functions for other nations who do not possess this capability. These developments have created a demand for a broad spectrum of mission control systems and support for many different operations scenarios on the ground.
It is clear that increased commercialisation, more powerful technology on both the ground and in Space, longer mission lifetimes, more powerful launch vehicles, easier access to control facilities, sophisticated data distribution etc. are key drivers which are helping to shape the world of mission control and operations. The likely impact of these and other key drivers on the present and the future is discussed in the following sections.
The following are considered to be the major key drivers in the evolution of Mission Control and Operations during the last 30 years. There is every reason to believe that they will continue to have a major influence in this area for some time to come:
Increased commercialisation has resulted in Space becoming an everyday working environment. It is now recognised that there are many benefits to be found from using the Space around our planet as well as from travelling further afield. Closer to home are the commercial Communications and Earth Observation missions while the more outward looking and deep Space missions still tend to belong to the world of the scientist and academia. It is unlikely to be long however before these missions also become part of a struggle for commercial advantage between nations and industry in Space.
The military benefits of a Space presence in terms of eavesdropping and spying have been apparent for some time and are one of the reasons that a number of countries have now become part of the Space club. Many are concerned that their adversaries have access to information about neighbouring countries, much of which can be derived from Space based observations. The Gulf War is a very recent example of how the use of satellites can help in navigation, spying and assessing damage and risks in a conflict situation.
The development of powerful technology for direct and indirect Space applications impacts the development of new satellites as well as the subsequent monitoring and control of existing and new missions. In these cases "power" can be considered as referring to a number of different properties such as miniaturisation, processing power, flexibility, capability etc. Rapid advances in many of these areas have allowed the capabilities of current Space based technology to far outperform missions of the earlier years. As a side effect, there is potentially a corresponding increase in the complexity of both the Space and ground segments which brings with it an associated increased risk, as demonstrated recently with Ariane 5. Indeed there are even some who argue that increased autonomy and complexity on board the Spacecraft actually leads to more complex and man intensive mission control operations, thereby calling into question the actual cost benefits of this increased complexity and autonomy.
Price/performance has increased dramatically for overall missions as well as for individual Spacecraft components. Of course there are still many specialised, complex and delicate components that will remain considerably expensive for many years to come. However, in general the components to make a Spacecraft are much cheaper today than they were some 15 years ago. Whilst the technology costs tend to be following a downward trend, as systems become more complex there seems to be almost a contradictory need for more complex ground systems and greater expertise of support staff.
Longer mission lifetimes are of benefit to both near earth missions and deep Space missions. Longer lifetimes are generally a result of better and more powerful/reliable technology and/or an increased level of ambition to attempt missions whose culmination may not occur until many years after launch, such as Galileo or Cassini/Huygens. Longer mission lifetimes create the problem of maintaining outdated expertise and technology well after everyday terrestrial use may have terminated. While the on-ground control and support systems can be updated, the systems operating in Space are, from a hardware perspective at least, frozen after launch. Specific exceptions to this do exist, such as the refurbishment of the Hubble telescope and recoverable/reusable missions such as Eureca, which are themselves complex and expensive exercises.
A number of more powerful launchers and a wider choice of launch vehicles has allowed small missions to be launched relatively easily, either on their own or with larger payloads, while progressively larger payloads can be carried by many of today's powerful launchers such as Ariane 5.
Easier access to control facilities and a move to cost reduction through standardisation and reuse, mean that the technology and expertise to put and keep missions operating in Space is no longer the preserve of the larger agencies. Additionally, the cost of these systems and their operations are much reduced, especially for the simpler missions. The more ambitious missions however still tend to incur considerable expense. Components of COTS software are now available for many aspects of Mission Control Systems which allows standard functionality to be obtained at much lower cost and with less risk. There is still however, little standardisation across hardware components.
Space data are now a commodity that is easily available to many people other than just the research scientists. A good example of this is the various HST images that are now available on the Internet.
Data are continually transmitted electronically across the planet by file transfer, CD-ROM or WWW. The WWW is also fast becoming a standard data storage and access mechanism for many organisations and applications which have an need to disseminate large amounts of data. The speed limitations of the terrestrial networks are already being reached and Space based dissemination is not so far away.
Many sophisticated commercial products now exist to allow relatively naive users to design and configure specific user interfaces to various databases in order to allow them to access and present their data in a way that is completely tailored to their individual needs.
The future is approaching fast. It can be expected that the current rapid change and development in Space activities and technology will continue to accelerate. This will lead to many opportunities for the Space industry and impact many more individuals than currently, on an everyday basis. What is less clear perhaps are the potential sociological changes that may well accompany such an evolution. No doubt some will be positive, others negative. This section postulates the effect of the key drivers on our immediate future in an attempt to derive a picture of the future of the Space Industry in the early next century.
Commercialisation of Space and associated activities will continue to increase. The currently small number of organisations that provide services in the areas of telecommunications and remote sensing will be joined by other companies offering opportunities to take advantage of medium and long term microgravity as well as many more smaller organisations providing Space based services for materials production and research in Space. As the costs of putting objects into and bringing them back from Space decreases, many support industries will develop. The main areas will probably be:
With a likely explosion in the number of satellites and vehicles in Space, manufacturers will be either producers of high cost and highly customised hardware or mass producers of low cost standard components, or even complete satellites.
From a services point of view, it is likely that the development, operations and maintenance of mission control centres could in the future, be outsourced to large commercial organisations which take on the responsibility for running a number of, potentially different, space missions in parallel. There is a similar trend already apparent in industry with a general move towards outsourcing/facilities management of many computer and software systems but to see this happen in the Space industry could call into question the existence of some of the many space organisations that exist today. In industry, one of the main reasons for outsourcing is to allow industry to focus on it's core business, if mission control and operations are outsourced then what will the core business of the Space agencies become ?
Much of everyday mission control and operations will be performed automatically with little human intervention required, if at all. Near Earth missions will be relatively straightforward and satellites will be able to control themselves with little or no need for earth based control centres. Deep Space missions will not be able to operate in real time because of the vast distances involved and much of their operations will be completely automated.
This is the area where the most dramatic and far reaching changes will be felt. The rate of progress in Space has for many years been driven by the price of smaller and faster technology. The next 50 years will see a revolution in this area as micro and then nanotechnology come into everyday use. Much of this revolution will have sociological as well as technological impacts.
The main objective of most Space agencies today is, in the mid to long term, to reduce the costs and delays associated with their Space based services. In effect this means increasing performance while reducing Spacecraft lifecycle costs and lead times.
An example of recent and projected evolution in these areas is reflected in the following table which summarises the evolution of the mass characteristics of Mars landers.
Spacecraft Launch Mass Entry Mass Lander Mass
(with propellant)
Viking 3399 kg 1067 kg 576 kg
Pathfinder (Dec 870 kg 566 kg 325 kg
1996)
Millennium (2010 ?) <=5 kg 2.5 kg 1.5 kg
Nanosat (>2050) <=5.0 g 2.5 g 1.5 g
Figure 1 : Weight characteristics of recent and planned Mars Explorers
The Viking Spacecraft was launched in 1975 with a launch mass of 3399 kg, the Pathfinder mission to be launched in December 1996 will see the mass characteristics almost halved by comparison. Characteristics for the planned launch of the Millennium Spacecraft in 2010 will see a further reduction of approximately 20 times on that of Pathfinder Spacecraft. This massive reduction in mass will be made possible by the use of micro technology (m electronics). However, to really get a flavour of the future, it is necessary to look at the technology that will be commonplace in the late 21st century when nano technology is fully developed and practical. With this level of technology, many components are approaching the size of bacteria. At this level of miniaturisation it will be possible to have "assembly lines" on board Spacecraft which can repair or reproduce components of the Spacecraft while in operation. This would see potentially millions of small intelligent satellites in orbit or on deep Space missions. A natural progression of this would be, for long term/deep Space missions, to allow modification of these assembly lines themselves. This would potentially allow operational Spacecraft to utilise more modern technology developed since the launch of the spacecraft.
It is interesting to speculate on a future in Space with less human involvement. Whilst many launch vehicles are becoming ever more powerful, such as Ariane 4 and 5, the Delta launchers and Space Shuttle, technology will also enable the development of smaller and ever more sophisticated robots. This will allow, for instance, robots to colonise and develop other planets, or the moon, with little or no human presence. Once a base is firmly established, then humans could be transported to the new base. The current trend towards miniaturisation will support this approach well and the larger, more powerful launch vehicles will become necessary only for transporting humans. Against a background of considerably improved robotics even Space Stations become unnecessary and the only reason for man to go into Space would be to travel, to another body.
These conclusions assume that the software development crisis of the last twenty years can be overcome and that the developments in robotics and miniaturisation continue. This has seen more and more tools in use for code generation and user interface development although these tools do tend to proliferate fewer software engineering principles. There are still major questions over the general quality of software development which suggest that as an engineering discipline, software engineering still has some way to go.
With the cost of entry into the Space club declining dramatically, the number of uses that Spacecraft can be put to will expand far beyond our current concepts. Many Spacecraft will be almost identical due to mass production, widespread standardisation and similarity of use. This will allow mission control systems to enter the realm of COTS software and from a hardware perspective, to utilise standard building blocks for e.g. Spacecraft buses.
Already today we see efforts to standardise and combine the areas of EGSE and Mission Control Systems. It will not be long before such an operational hybrid exists. This will see a single control system being used for satellite checkout, mission preparation, mission planning, mission execution and mission evaluation. This will greatly reduce the mission costs of developing separate mission control and EGSE systems and the parallel trend in technology will see these systems becoming present on ever more smaller and powerful hardware boxes.
From a sociological perspective, many of today's poorer nations will soon be able to acquire Space technology relatively cheaply. This could well lead to an escalation of military uses, at least in the short term.
With telecommunications and remote sensing Spacecraft and systems relatively mature, one of the next areas to experience growth will be that of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). These can be expected to allow tracking and location of almost any object on the earth's surface, as well as assisting in providing guidance for land, sea and air based traffic.
The last five years have seen an almost exponential growth in the use of the Internet and, more recently, the World Wide Web. This will likely be one of the main data transmission and access mechanisms for the immediate future, tempered only by the available bandwidth. In the future the WWW will probably be based around the use of satellite communications.
The proliferation of user interface tools and their ease of configurability will allow easy customisation of applications by individuals who will potentially have access to a world wide database, many times the size of the current resources available on the WWW. This will also create potential problems regarding the monitoring, control and protection of these vast amounts of data.
At the very least there are two conflicting views of the future. One sees the scale increasing while the other sees it decreasing. While the miniaturisation efforts will be initially more costly, in the long term they will prove cheaper to mass produce and so to take off our planet. Man will only be able to effectively travel the vast distances to reach neighbouring planets, and later solar systems, by overcoming a number of inherent physical and physiological limitations. Space travel and research will become ever more effective and cheaper with the technology of the next century but we need only put man into Space if there is a desire or definite need for him to travel. Most of the tasks to be carried out in Space will be performed by machines and robots, in ways that are cheaper, more reliable and less prone to the foibles and limitations of man.
If man is to have a future in Space, it will therefore be more as a traveller and less as a worker. Subsequently, most mission control and operations will be handled by systems that provide an automated and invisible infrastructure to the Space community.