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https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2010/paper16.pdf
MASTER IN SCIENZA E TECNOLOGIA SPAZIALE – UNIVERSITA’ DI ROMA “TOR
VERGATA”
Internship at Serco SPA
Operational Scenarios of the
EarthCARE Mission
Candidata: Elisabetta Giuliani
Relatore: Vittorio Torroni
A.A. 2015 - 2016
Copyright © held by the author.
Introduction
Preamble
The current paper summarizes the focus of my work done at Serco S.P.A from June 2016 to March
2017 about the Operational Scenarios of the Payload Data Ground Segment (PDGS) of the EarthCare
mission.
Motivation
Drafting the Mission Operational Scenarios in advance is an extremely important practice in the
wider system engineering context because it helps the stakeholders to provide clear requirements,
which in turn minimises the risk of modifying the requirements after the system has been developed
and introduce delays and additional costs.
The Operational Scenarios respond to the answer: HOW the ESA PDGS will be used?
They are intended to:
• serving as an input to the definition of the PDGS Integration and Validation Plan
• serving as an input to the definition and drawing up of the PDGS Operational Plan
• acting as guides for preparation of all necessary procedures during the operational phase for
all subsystems of PDGS
• supporting all the management project activities, in order to identify the needed skills and
the needed resources, also in terms of contracts and work schedules
My activity of definition of the EarthCare Operational Scenarios has been carried out according to
what was already defined in the ESA EarthCARE Payload Data Ground Segment Operation Concept
document, by expanding the already defined scenarios and by focusing not only on the identification
of activities to be performed during the MOP- Measurement/Operational Phase- of the mission, but
above all by focusing on the identification of resources and skills that must be provided for such
activities. Indeed the tracked scenarios in the ESA document were built from a point of view of the
software developers and we have identified several gaps from the operational side. Thus we have
overhauled all the previously planned scenarios and all the involved activities and we have added all
the activities that were missing and that have an important role in the operational phase of the
EarthCARE mission. The scenarios have been often heavily rearranged and in some case we have
identified new scenarios as well, filling in such a way all the identified gaps.
EarthCARE mission and PDGS activity
The EarthCARE mission is being developed as a joint venture between ESA and the Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency. Its launch is foreseen for August 2019.
The EarthCARE system is composed of the Satellite, the Ground segment, including the Flight
Operation Segment and the Paylod Data Ground Segment and the Users. In the context of my
activity only the PDGS activities have been analysed and the Operational
Scenarios that I have filled are regarding those part of the EarthCARE system.
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In particular the PDGS is in charge to implement a vast set of functionalities, from the payload
planning strategy definition and payload calibration to the data acquisition, data processing and data
quality control, in order manage the storage and the data distribution to the user as reliable as
possible
All those activities are managed by the related facilities and in the fully essay an analysis has been
performed on that in order to identify the proper PDGS Operational Scenarios
Operational Scenarios
For the management of all the PDGS activities I have identified in my work the following Operational
Scenarios:
Mission Planning Scenario that is divided in two sub-scenarios:
- Main Scenario, describing the routine Mission Planning and Delta-Planning activities
- Instrument Parameter Update Scenario, describing the special case of planning
performed to modify the configuration of the instruments on board
Data Acquisition Scenario
Processing scenario that is divided in three sub-scenarios:
- Level0 Processing Scenario
- Level1 Processing Scenario
- Level2 Processing Scenario
Reprocessing Scenario
Off-line Quality Control Scenario
Calibration Scenarios articled in:
- On-line Calibration
- Off-line Calibration
End-to-end monitoring Scenario
Ingestion, Circulation and Archiving Scenario that is articled in two sub-scenarios:
Each scenario has been identified by a specific naming convention and a specific ID, in order to
identify univocally the scenario in scope and according to the ECSS.
For each scenario a short description has been provided as well as tables, with the list of all the
activities that have to be performed. Each activity within a scenario is numbered with increasing
numbers, corresponding to the activities performed in chronological order.
Moreover in each table a column is referred to the actors involved in the managements of each
activity. This is a plus of my work related to the already defined scenarios, as they were planned in
EarthCARE Payload Data Ground Segment Operation Concept document. Indeed in such a way,
during the project managements activity, it will be possible to get a quick and clear overview of the
all needed resources that are going to be employed, because it will be possible to identify all the
activities that will be triggered or performed thanks to human intervention and the other ones that
will be performed in an automatic way. In the last row of the table all the applicable documents
related to the scenario have been listed as well.
Furthermore, a synthetic list of all the exchange data/file flows has been provided for each Scenario
in order to underline the relation among different facilities.
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Finally each Operational Scenario has been described also thanks to Sequence Diagrams that provide
a convenient graphical representation and underline the relations between different facilities.
Hereafter the Mission Planning Sequence Diagram is shown. It means as an example of the matters
we have just discussed.
Please refer to the fully essay for a clear vision of the identified and analysed Scenarios and of my
Master degree activity.
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