SPACECRAFT OPERATIONS TRAINING CENTRE: A COST AND TIME EFFICIENT SOLUTION FOR OPERATIONS TRAINING

摘要

Spacecraft operation is one of the most important areas in the space business. During the last decades hundreds of satellites have been launched and are operational. A lot of effort has been spent in these decades to reduce the cost of spacecraft operation. Many elements of the operation have been automated. However, operators will be always mandatory and therefore one of the key challenges in operations will remain open: how should operators be trained? The training in itself costs time and money. Training is normally performed in two different ways: 1.training on the job 2.external classroom training An operator who can perform training on the job, because he has experienced personal hasthe following costs to face: 3.Time spent by experienced operators to train the inexperienced on the job 4.Time spent in preparing and organising the training, As training to operations is not just theory, the trainee also needs to focus on practical issues, like the use of the mission control system. Therefore, one of the limitations is the availability of the hardware and software to perform this training. As space hardware and software is too expensive, normally the real mission control system or at least the redundant unit is used for this kind of training. Another limitation is when, during the programme lifecycle, to perform the training. Before the beginning of a mission the ground segment might be available, but not finally validated. After the launch it is nearly impossible. During the mission it becomes easier. So training will normally be performed either before the launch or after the commissioning of the satellite. If a mission lifetime is just about five years no further training is mandatory, but should the mission lifetime be greater than five years, a natural fluctuation of operators is to be expected. This means that experienced operators with practical experience will leave the team at some point and will normally be replaced by inexperienced operators. The time and cost impact of this can not and should not be ignored. Newcomers in the space business have an even bigger problem. They usually have no experienced operators and therefore have to buy external operators-training packages. In the majority of the cases it is the satellite supplier who offers such training. This is quite expensive and very satellite specific.