New Horizons Mission Operations: Spacecraft MemoryManagement Process to Reduce Mission Risk

摘要

Managing spacecraft memory can be a daunting task for spacecraft operators with today's computer intensive space missions. Failure to diligently carry out this process for even the smallest memory updates can have dire consequences and jeopardize mission success. This process is particularly challenging on more recent missions due to advanced system architecture and increased memory capacity. These advancements can greatly increase the number of state conditions, software memory objects and tunable parameters that need to be managed to support spacecraft operations and autonomous functions. On the New Horizons spacecraft there are several thousand flight software memory items that need to be configured and tracked throughout the mission. To support this effort the New Horizons mission operations team has implemented a process utilizing a combination of flight software, ground system and operational capabilities. This paper will describe in detail the process employed by the New Horizons mission operations team to configure and track spacecraft memory, with an emphasis on hardware simulator and spacecraft state synchronization. The authors will also present some operational lessons learned and offer some recommendations on how to improve this process for future missions.