Tom MladenovYGT Mission Operations Concept Engineer

13/12/2020 OSCW20

OPS-SATYour code: our mission

Tom Mladenov ESA/ESOC | OSCW20 | 13/12/2020 | Slide 2

Overview

• OPS-SAT experimenter community & how to join

• What you can do on OPS-SAT

• How we test and upload your code

• How to communicate with your app in orbit

• OPS-SAT operations

• Amateur radio on OPS-SAT

• Live demo:

NMF application (Dominik Marszk & Lorenzo Gagliardini)

Custom application (Georges Labrèche)

Deployment on the satellite engineering model

Live pass demonstration

Tom Mladenov ESA/ESOC | OSCW20 | 13/12/2020 | Slide 3

OPS-SAT Experimenters• Experimenters range from Universities, start-ups to large Corporations (Airbus, CNES, GCI,…)

• 153 official registrations in total

• Interaction through a ‘Community Platform’ (*)

*https://opssat1.esoc.esa.int/

Tom Mladenov ESA/ESOC | OSCW20 | 13/12/2020 | Slide 4

Community Platformhttps://opssat1.esoc.esa.int/

• Experimenter Support

HW/SW Documentation

News updates

Forum

Bug report/issue tracking

• Spacecraft telemetry

Near real-time

Data export

Command history

• Software submission

File checks

Packaging pipeline

Report generation

• Live connections

Connect to our testbeds

Connect to the satellite in orbit

• Data dissemination

Imagery

Artefacts from your

own application

Tom Mladenov ESA/ESOC | OSCW20 | 13/12/2020 | Slide 5

Possibilities on OPS-SAT

• HD-camera (Nadir-facing)

~70m/pix, colour, variable exposure range

2048x1944 px

• Advanced iADCS (Attitude Determination & Control Sys.)

Reaction Wheels + Startracker

• Experimentation with custom IP-cores on the FPGA

• Optical receiver (data uplink via laser)

Uplink rate limited to several kbits/s

• Software Defined Radio (LMS6002D)

300MHz – 3.8GHz

Monopole antenna on OPS-SAT: 300MHz – 800MHz

• X-band transmitter (3-50MBit/s)

• 2x Cyclone V SoC (800MHz Dual Core ARM Cortex-A9 + FPGA

fabric)

• Embedded Linux to run Python 3, Java, C, Cpp,…

Tom Mladenov ESA/ESOC | OSCW20 | 13/12/2020 | Slide 6

How we test and upload your code

• Software on OPS-SAT is managed by opkg

• 2 testbeds for validating experimentes

A ‘FlatSat’ with Mityarm SoC

A fully fledged Engineering Model with ADCS, Camera etc

• Online and offline tests possible

• Iteration cycles until ready for deployment in orbit

Tom Mladenov ESA/ESOC | OSCW20 | 13/12/2020 | Slide 7

How to communicate with your app in orbit

• Files

• Space Packets

• Command shell to the satellite

• MO services (NMF)

Ground

Space

Tom Mladenov ESA/ESOC | OSCW20 | 13/12/2020 | Slide 8

How to communicate with your app in orbit

• Files

Transfer files to ESOC via SFTP to be uplinked to your application

Schedule files, orbital elements, solar activity, …

Dump experiment logfiles, pictures into a dedicated downlink folder on-board

Files are up/downloaded using CCSDS File Delivery Protocol (first in-orbit use by ESA)

Tom Mladenov ESA/ESOC | OSCW20 | 13/12/2020 | Slide 9

How to communicate with your app in orbit

• Files

• Space Packets

Connect to our MCS over the internet via port forwarding

Send and receive CCSDS Space Packets with your own assigned APID (Application Process ID)

SPPs sent from ground are routed to the SEPP on the satellite

Connect your app to a TCP server on-board to receive them

Tom Mladenov ESA/ESOC | OSCW20 | 13/12/2020 | Slide 10

How to communicate with your app in orbit

• Files

• Space Packets

• Command shell to the satellite

Execute linux commands with your own user directly on the SEPP

Tom Mladenov ESA/ESOC | OSCW20 | 13/12/2020 | Slide 11

How to communicate with your app in orbit

STDOUT arriving on your end Shell command uplink

Tom Mladenov ESA/ESOC | OSCW20 | 13/12/2020 | Slide 12

How to communicate with your app in orbit

• Files

• Space Packets

• Command shell to the satellite

• MO services (NMF)

Light weight mission control system (LWMCS)

Launch actions, monitor telemetry

Command and control your app in-orbit from a browser

Tom Mladenov ESA/ESOC | OSCW20 | 13/12/2020 | Slide 13

OPS-SAT operations

ESOC-2 UHF antennaESOC1 3.7m S/X dish

SMILE LAB at ESOC

• SMILE = Special Mission Infrastructure

Laboratory Environment

• Heavy use of automation

• Spacecraft commissioning currently

performed remotely due to COVID

• 3 frequency bands:

UHF (437 MHz)

S-band (2.3 GHz)

X-band (8.1 GHz)

Tom Mladenov ESA/ESOC | OSCW20 | 13/12/2020 | Slide 14

Amateur Radio on OPS-SAT

• Published the downlink specifications (OPS-SAT uses UHF amateur radio frequencies)

• Released open-source signal decoding tools for receiving OPS-SAT

• Issued a ‘call for listening to OPS-SAT’ (26k+ views)

• Further community interaction at GRCon20 conference

• Received support in the form of

Individual detailed signal reports during LEOP

Continued observations/coverage via SatNOGS

Radio Amateurs via SatNOGS:

• Received 629k+ UHF packets

• Took 13500+ passes with OPS-SAT

• Were critical to the LEOP phase due to early communications issues

• More upcoming activities planned

Tom Mladenov ESA/ESOC | OSCW20 | 13/12/2020 | Slide 15

Amateur Radio on OPS-SAT

FH Aachen

Dwingeloo radiotelescope via SatNOGS

Radio amateurs in Finland

Tom Mladenov ESA/ESOC | OSCW20 | 13/12/2020 | Slide 16

Demo time!