In recent years a subtle change has happened in satellite operations, which has an impact on theapproach to operations training. Constellation missions are becoming more frequent as technologiesare able to deal with the added complexities. With respect to operations training, the standard hastypically been one satellite – one training simulator to support the operations preparation. With newconstellation missions such as Galileo or SWARM the approach to training the operations team mustbe reconsidered. One could think there is no difference from a pure operations training point ofview, if there are several spacecraft instead of one. There are just a number of identical spacecraft,which are operated one at the time it is in communication range. Reality is of course different,spacecraft are not necessarily identical and a constellation can be made out of families of spacecraftinstead of identical spacecraft. This requires a significant amount more configuration managementand it requires a different way of planning and operation. This constitutes a huge challenge to theflight operations team. The flight control team has to consider all the small but essential differencesin the configuration and operation of each of the spacecraft in the constellation. This has of coursean impact on the mission operations approach and specifically the training approach. It impacts allground segment elements including the training simulator. In the following we describe thechallenge of the operations of a satellite constellation and the impact on the missions operationstraining simulators.
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