Innovation in the space sector has so far mainly focused in mission enabling technologies and has largely ignored the platform part of the missions, in particular hardware and software. Bringing innovation to the software platform of space missions, being this onboard, across the space link, or on ground is the main topic of this paper. The paper introduces a tool, the TRL+, to assess the outdatedness of the technology in use and the identification of modern substitute technologies. Among these, Mission Operations (MO) Services are emerging CCSDS standards that are meant to reduce the chronic gap in innovation that has accumulated between terrestrial and on-board software technology. CCSDS is defining MO Services that are distributable, i.e. designed to be used on-ground, on-board and across the space link and that extend from on-board, through the ground systems, to the end users. They are independent of transport and encoding technology and standard across all CCSDS Agencies. Among the several benefits, MO services will also increase the science return by means of innovative service orchestration.
展开▼
