The YAMCS Notification Add-on: an automated notification tool for operations in human space flight

For more than seven years, the Belgian User Support and Operations Centre (B.USOC) is operating the Solar Monitoring Observatory (SOLAR) – an experiment of the European Space Agency (ESA), hosted on one of the external platforms of the Columbus module on the International Space Station (ISS). Since the beginning of SOLAR operations, B.USOC has invested in developing tools to support and to guarantee high quality operations. The Yet Another Mission Control System (Yamcs) software, a lightweight Mission Control System (MCS) developed and deployed at B.USOC as an extension of the standard ESA Columbus MCS, allows the SOLAR Operators to monitor the telemetry, to quickly browse the data archive, and to perform replays of events. Due to cost saving measures at the Columbus Control Centre in Munich, from January 2014 on the B.USOC team was obligated to provide 24/7 on-console service, demanding a huge effort from the small team. Therefore, the Yamcs software was extended with a notification tool which allowed B.USOC to return to nominal shift coverage. The papers presents this software extension called “The Yamcs Notification Add-on” (TYNA). TYNA actively monitors all the SOLAR telemetry data and the connections between the different servers and notifies the on-call Operators in case of anomalies. Via a web-interface it is possible to define different monitoring rules, as well as the type of notification, and who will be notified. One can choose between notification via email, text message, phone call, or a combination. The monitoring rules define the content of the TYNA message, which allows a quick assessment of the occurred anomaly by the on-call Operator. As the SOLAR telemetry can be accessed remotely from any workstation with the Yamcs software, the SOLAR Operator can quickly assess the nature of the anomaly as being a payload issue, an on-board system anomaly, or a ground segment problem, and inform the counterparts and take adequate countermeasures. TYNA started monitoring the SOLAR payload on 15th July 2014 and allowed to reduce the on-console service from 24/7 to 16/7 shift coverage when the payload is generating science data, and nominal working hours during periods when the payload is in idle mode. While currently only applied for the SOLAR payload, the TYNA software has been validated to interface with the commonly used ESA MCS tools applied in the Columbus Payload Data Center (CD-MCS) and to monitor the other ESA payloads and Columbus System Telemetry. Both Yamcs and TYNA, developed with the support of ESA, are open source software and free of use for the ISS payload community.