Ham video commissioning – Coordinating and training four ground segments in real-time to successfully support a time critical 7-minute crew activity
| dc.contributor.author | Karl, A | |
| dc.contributor.author | Michel, A. | |
| dc.date | 2016 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2021-07-22T07:47:57Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2021-07-22T07:47:57Z | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://orfeo.belnet.be/handle/internal/7906 | |
| dc.description | The Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) community has been regularly operating educational experiments dedicated to radio communications between the ISS and ground stations, referred to as the “Ham Radio” programme. This programme allows members of the radio amateur community to establish a half-duplex voice-only link with crewmembers on the ISS. Additionally, Ham Radio has been used for educational programmes of NASA, ESA and JAXA to allow pupils from all over the world to ask questions live to the astronauts. To enhance the Ham Radio programme, ARISS proposed to implement an audio/video transmission from ISS to ground by means of a new audio/video transmitter payload. This payload, called Ham Video, makes use of the advances in digital satellite communications (using the DVB-S standard) to provide an affordable and reliable connection between the ISS and ground. The Belgian User Support and Operations Centre (B.USOC) conducted for ESA the Ham Video On-Orbit Functional Commissioning in March and April 2014, during which the payload was installed in Columbus and the functionalities of the hardware and the related on-orbit equipment were tested. Ham Video was tested sequentially in all configurations, frequencies and symbol rates, with each of the Columbus ARISS antennas. These two S-band antennas had never been tested in space since their installation before the Columbus launch in 2008. Three ISS passes were planned to be tracked with a wide range dish located in Matera, the Italian Space Agency’s (ASI) ground station in the South of Italy. An additional smaller ground station in Italy was later added to the setup. The ISS ground tracks were covered by the Matera ground station, the duration of the S-band signal reception was around 7 - 8 minutes. During this time crew changed Ham Video configurations as instructed by ground. B.USOC as payload and coordination responsible for the ground operations were supported by the Columbus Control Centre (Col-CC) for crew communications, the ARISS members on location at B.USOC, and Matera personnel via phone. Matera was streaming the received signal on a web server for B.USOC to follow in real-time the transmission status, and on-console operators were informing crew of the expected Acquisition Of Signal and Loss of Signal (AOS/LOS) at Matera and with which frequency configuration to proceed. After the successful conclusion of the commissioning ARISS selected the best configuration for future use and the Ham Video payload is now available to crew for ARISS activities. What made the commissioning activities special was on the one hand the time criticality of just 7 minutes per pass as well as the fact that operations had to be coordinated between B.USOC and several parties who were not used to the ISS operational environment while needed to be included in the realtime operations. Training those parties was a major part of the preparations. This paper will present the operational concept of the commissioning, and the results and lessons learned of the activities. The integration and preparation process will also be explained including the simulations used to prepare and train all parties for the operations. | |
| dc.language | eng | |
| dc.title | Ham video commissioning – Coordinating and training four ground segments in real-time to successfully support a time critical 7-minute crew activity | |
| dc.type | Conference | |
| dc.subject.frascati | Physical sciences | |
| dc.audience | Scientific | |
| dc.source.title | Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Space Operations (SpaceOps 2016), Daejeon, South Korea, 16-20 May 2016 | |
| dc.source.page | AIAA 2016-2641 | |
| Orfeo.peerreviewed | No | |
| dc.identifier.doi | 10.2514/6.2016-2641 |
