The growing number of citizen space exploration projects require an easily customised, user friendly, open source mission control software application. Devised to support a UK Space Agency CubeSat student payload, Open Mission Control has been extended to support the unique requirements of space exploration missions managed by engaged citizens. Such missions are characterised by their design and substantial operation by citizens typically not engaged in professional space engineering and science. Technical skill ranges from nonexistent to highly sophisticated, so developing software that is satisfying for users of all abilities is challenging. Open Mission Control supports this diverse user base by allowing a mission control application to be created by visually populating the Open Mission Control Application Framework with modules from the Open Mission Control Toolbox. These cover the wide range of telemetry and command functions that a typical small space mission requires, such as a command module with a robust, yet easy to use, arm-and-release procedure. The software can support a variety of ground segment architectures including CCSDS, GENSO and myGroundStations.com, with data replicated and displayed locally in mission specific interfaces. The software is cryptographically configured to act as an active mission control or passive outreach installation allowing 'the real thing' to be safely used by users of all ability. Written in National Instruments Lab VIEW? and a participant in the ESA Summer of Code in Space, source code and binaries released under an OSI BSD license for Windows, OSX and Linux can be downloaded from OpenMissionControl.org. UKube-1 and myPocketQub 391, due to be launched in the second half of 2012, are the first flight projects expected to use the software, followed by many of more than one hundred citizen sponsored Sprite spacecraft due to be dispensed by the KickSat.org CubeSat in early 2013.
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