Mission control system for Earth observation missions based on SCOS-2000

As part of the CryoSat and GOCE mission control systems (MCS), GMV S.A. is currently developing the MCS kernel for the European Space Agency (ESA) Earth Observation missions. The first intention is to customize the ESA's SCOS-2000 system for the support of the missions belonging to the ESA Earth Explorer programme, although the idea can be extended to a wider scope. This kernel is a step forward in developing cost effective mission control systems. It provides generic support for the most of the common requirements in earth observation missions, such as pass-based operations, control of the on board execution of command timelines, on board software management for platform and payload, interface with the ground segment systems, and near-real time distribution of data to external entities. The system also provides an extensive support of the most common ESA packet utilization standard (PUS) services. This generic support can be applied to many other missions that share the same concept of operations, even outside the earth observation context. Some of the features will be repatriated into SCOS-2000, and the core has already been extensively reused in other missions, such as the Galileo GSTB-V2. One of the main issues solved has been how a single mission control system software can be applied to several missions in a efficient way, handling mission specific features and configuration, but without compromising the safety of each particular mission.