3 balloon campaigns in 10 months - 3 Outback balloon flights in a fortnight: a challenge made true!

摘要

As presented at SpaceOps 2016, the CNES (French Space Agency) Zero Pressure Balloon (ZPB) operational activities resumed in 2014 with a new improved system, NOSYCA (New Operation System for the Control of Aerostats). In 2016, campaigns in Sweeden and Australia were already foreseen, but what was not expected was that these campaigns were to happen within less than one year, from July 2016 to April 2017 ! Due to the youth of NOSYCA and each campaign's constraints, we thus had to implement several major upgrades of the ground segment, the onboard systems and the operational procedures. This presentation is the story of all the challenges CNES had to tackle over these 10 months to finally break an unofficial record: successfully launching 3 heavy flights in less than 15 days during the 2017 campaign in Australia. Setting up a campaign is a standard process at CNES and is procedured at mission level. This process provides guidelines to manage international cooperations and bilateral agreements between CNES and the host country (CNES/Australian CSIRO agreement, CNES/NASA agreement, CNES/JAXA agreement), local technical constraints (frequency clearances, airborne transponder requirements, local support contracts, host site search...), local custom procedures, local safety requirements, specific unmanned balloon regulations and procedures (even if the NOSYCA system is compliant with the International Civil Aviation Organization regulations), local political constraints (aborigine lands for instance)... All these aspects following their own pace, implying delays, costs and operational impacts. Managing a balloon campaign is not a piece of cake but facing 3 campaigns in a row, one of them 15000 km away, is quite a challenge ! No launch base means no campaign ! Using three different launch bases implied that we had to adapt three times, and re-install our ground segment, our flight chains preparation means and our operational procedures. Even if two of them had already been used some years ago, they were unknown from a NOSYCA's safety point of view. We had to adapt our ground segment to the Kiruna Swedish launch base, integrating their brand new 2GHz NIMA antenna. We had to arrange a fully operational launch base in Australia, based on the NASA's and CSIRO infrastructures... 15000 km away from France ! To comply with the balloon mission's requirements when planning a campaign, CNES has to assess the best meteorological period for the flights. That implies a climatology study involving the processing of several years of data, and the use of a Geographical Information System to produce the most accurate and suitable map compliant with national safety regulations for overflight and landing areas forecast. Also local phenomena risks are assessed, as Australia's low level jets for instance. Once all this has been taken into account, it has to be confronted to the operationnal schedule ! NOSYCA system emerged in 2013 with its first flight test campaign in Canada. It was then in the hands of the development team. It has been transferred to operators for the 2015 Canada's campaign. With the operational vision, many improvements have been implemented either to fulfill operationnal needs (exhausting flowmeter, maritime gondolas, dual primary telemetry link) or to comply with host site requirements (ADS-B transponders in Australia, sweedish safety tool feeding). These evolutions had to be implemented on the operational equipment in parallel of the campaigns' preparation, constraining the schedule once more. Preparing a balloon campaign means transporting tons of specific equipment (120 t for Australia's campaign) in tens of containers across the world. We spent hours understanding logistics and customs constraints to find the best cost-effective transport solution while mitigating the risks of our containers being delayed (quarantine, logistics operator delays). On top of that, we had to plan CNES operationnal team's flight plans, missions and tec