T HE purpose of this paper is to report on the work being done to define a Spacecraft Operations Language Metamodel. This work was performed in response to a Request for Proposal (RFP) issued in June 2005 by the Object Management Group (OMG). Research has been conducted to show that standardizing on a spacecraft operations language will result in significant cost savings to spacecraft development and operations. 1 A model or metamodel of a spacecraft operations language is the basis for this standardization.A metamodel is used to describe the common elements of a language or other entity. A Spacecraft Operations Language Metamodel describes the common elements of a spacecraft procedure language, which is used to control and monitor spacecraft. This metamodel is then mapped to existing spacecraft procedure languages such as Spacecraft Test and Operations Language (STOL), Procedure Language for Users in Test and Operations (PLUTO), OS/COMET ® Control Language (CCL), and Command Interface Language (CIL). We can then enable tools that convert from one language to another, or allow procedure coding (either textual or graphical) in a standard environment to produce equivalent procedure files in multiple languages.In addition, the metamodel will map to the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) Telemetry and Command Exchange (XTCE), a format that has been adopted by the OMG for standardizing on spacecraft telemetry and command definitions.This paper describes a Spacecraft Operations Language Metamodel as defined by the authors and shows its mapping to two specific spacecraft procedure languages, CCL and STOL, as well as its implementation in standard off the shelf tools.
Satellite operators perform their satellite operations through the use of operations languages, which encapsulate their experience (often referred to as operations knowledge). These languages are dependent on the underlying control system, and in many cases there are multiple variants of any given language for a particular mission or satellite type.Many operators are interested in decoupling this operations knowledge from a particular control system and its corresponding language. There are various reasons for this. Either they wish to migrate from a given control system supporting a given language, to another control system supporting another language. Or a satellite manufacturer may deliver operational (or test) procedures in a language that is supported by the manufacturing test system or EGSE, but which does not support the operator's control system.In either of these cases, a translation of the procedures to another language is required. For these reasons, the problem of translating procedures to either transfer operations knowledge or to migrate to different systems is a relevant and important problem in space industry. Rhea has been studying this problem for a number of years and has developed specific solutions for specific languages. However, the ability to automatically translate between or analyse programs written in different operations languages is the end goal for such a problem. Unfortunately, building such advanced generic program analysis and translation tools, is a non-trivial task for various reasons. This paper highlights some of the issues, problems and pitfalls we have encountered with building such tools and their underlying techniques, and is based on the experience gained in a research project with our academic partner UCL. Many of the difficulties encountered stem from the fact that there exist a large amount of different operations languages, each with their own syntax, style and language constructs. In addition, some of the languages are ill defined, poorly documented, or still under evolution. To illustrate some of these issues we explain the APPAREIL meta-tool we developed for automatically generating program translators and analysers for operations languages.
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