Spacecraft autonomy and reliability in MTG satellite via On-board Control Procedures

Abstract

On-board Control Procedures (OBCPs) provide a useful mean to implement functional as well as operational flight procedures (e.g. payload switch-on/switch-off and spacecraft mode management) which can be modified, if necessary, even during the mission itself. This paper addresses the OBCP implementation in Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) satellite, where OBCPs are written in a specific language called On-board Command Language (OCL) and executed by a virtual machine installed into the spacecraft on-board SW. Before being uploaded, OBCPs are implemented and tested on ground by means of a dedicated OBCP development environment. Thanks to the OCL features and OBCP operational approach, OBCP usage can help in raising spacecraft robustness against environmental changes, reliability and autonomy capabilities.Keywords-On-board control procedure (OBCP); spacecraft autonomy; spacecraft reliability; on-board virtual machine.

Development of Onboard Control System Architecture for Nanosatellites

“…The research takes advantage of using orbit and design data from two different missions KazEOSat-1 and KazSTSat [5] for the analysis. The architecture of the onboard software of the KazEOSat-1 [6] and KazSTSAT [3] remote sensing SC has a basic structure corresponding to the traditional static architecture of the OBSW, considered in [7] and [8].…”

“…The application layer performs the main modes of the SC and mission control, monitoring of the technical condition of the SC, management of subsystems and the system level FDIR (Failure Detection, Isolation and Recovery). In order to support the platform and payload operations, On-Board Control Procedures (OBCP) [8] provide the capability to interact with the OBSW by executing script files previously uploaded on board by operators of the ground station [7].…”