Virtual Science Operations Center: Concept, Deployment and Operations

摘要

Space Research Institute (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences is one of leading organizations in the field of investigations of Space Plasma Physics, Planetary Explorations, High Energy Astrophysics, Earth observation from Space and many other space science activities. It develops and operates a number of complexes of scientific instruments onboard spacecrafts, as well as scientific satellites itself. In frame of development of the Phobos-Soil mission virtual science operations center was organized on the base of IKI. t exploits public networks and services to interconnect institutions, scientists, experts, and engineers to achieve an effect of presence all of them in one control room during scientific payload operations. Now this center operates of small satellite "Chibis-M" and complex of scientific instruments named "Plasma-F" onboard "Spectr-R" spacecraft. Historically, science operations centers of ground control segments has been housed in dedicated control rooms, specially designed science control software has been operated on dedicated servers and PCs, specially prepared for this mission management panel has been planned science operations, which then has been long discussed through specially organized meetings and so one. This approach caused by high cost and weakness of computer and network hardware, low bandwidth of networks, usage of specialized software and hardware for science operations management. But for now, computer hardware and software are dramatically improved, high network capabilities and technologies are spreaded everywhere and, what is also important, are wide used at every workplace. The network bandwidth now is not constraint for space science projects, high data rates allow to distribute online processed science telemetry across science community in a real-time manner.