PRISMA Mission Control: Transferring Satellite Control Between Organisations

摘要

The PRISMA in-orbit test-bed was launched in June 2010 to demonstrate strategies and technologies for formation flying and rendezvous. OHB Sweden is the prime contractor for the project which is funded by the Swedish National Space Board (SNSB) with support from DLR, CNES, and DTU. Mission operations are carried out from OHB Sweden's purpose built control-room in Solna, Sweden, using the company's own GNC and platform experts to conduct the mission. As an experimental technology demonstrator a large number of in-orbit experiments were initially planned, with desires exceeding the constraints of available funding. In an effort to extend the use of the satellites and enable more experiments DLR/GSOC offered to temporarily operate the satellites from their control center in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, for a period of five months. Control of the spacecraft was transferred to GSOC in March, 2011, after a training period of several months. A number of experiments were executed, including GSOC's own formation flying and autonomous orbit keeping, SSC ECAPS's green propulsion and several different OHB Sweden experiments. Handover back to OHB Sweden was then performed in August the same year, from where the mission continues to be run. Transferring control of a satellite project from one organization to another, including new operational personnel and a new control room, posed a great challenge to both parties. This paper describes the mission concept, the background for the transfer, implementation of a mirrored control room and the process of transferring knowledge from the design and operations team of OHB Sweden to the GSOC operations team.