TIMELINE, a Generic Tool for Mission Planning

Yann PARROD, Dominique CORBIERE, Christophe RABEJAC
parrod@isis.matra-espace.fr
MATRA MARCONI SPACE

Abstract:
Space Mission Operations domain is evolving rapidly. In order to reduce
development and Operations costs, Space Operators are now looking for generic 
tools and are moving to automating operations. Generic tools enable quicker and 
cheaper development of mission-specific Control Center (MCC) sub-systems. 
Operations automation reduces Operations costs by relieving MCC controlers from
low level routine tasks during the whole life of the satellite. 

MMS has developed the OPSWARE software package to fulfill this demand. OPSWARE 
is a set of complementary tools to assist users in Mission Operations. This 
paper will focus on TIMELINE, the Mission Planning module of OPSWARE. It will 
review the main technical drivers in the development of the tool, respectively 
genericity, integration, automation and interactivity. It will report users 
feedback and will indicate directions for future development.

TIMELINE has been designed as an open and generic tool. It fulfills main Mission 
Planning requirements  and its modular architecture enables adaptation and 
extensions to cover mission-specific needs. Close cooperation with MMS Operations 
teams has been essential to identify thoroughly Mission Planning requirements.

Integration in the global Operations processing chain is also a key driver. It 
relies on the inter-operability with procedures preparation 
tools upstream andwith procedures execution tools downstream. This is achieved 
in OPSWARE with the inter-operability with respectively OPSMAKER and OPSEXECUTER. 
This integration relies also on an interface with Flight Dynamics sub-systems 
which allows to import Mission events and to update automatically the schedule 
with new times.

Automation refers to the capability of the tool to verify automatically the 
schedule consistency  with respect to Operations constraints, to find a solution 
in case of conflicts and to control the schedule execution. This requires the 
capability to modelize the mission-specific knowledge on the Operations constraints 
and on the methods to solve conflicts. 

TIMELINE is developed as a portable C++ software. Version 1 has been used 
in the MMS Customer Support Center since May 1995. This first version 
coming with the release of other OPSWARE tools has convinced MMS 
Operations teams that significant progress could be achieved both in the 
working methods of operators and in the Space System autonomy. An internal 
project is going-on for improving OPSWARE Operations tools and for 
automating Operations.