WaveOps: Using Real-Time Collaboration Technology to Support Effective Mission Operations

This paper summarises the work performed by the European Space Agency (ESA) for studying the introduction of Web 2.0 technologies to support collaboration in operations activities at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC). The study identified the need of improvement of the collaboration processes between different teams involved in all mission phases, from preparation and launch to routine operations. These were described in a set of user’s stories. The user and technical requirements derived from this initial phase were used as basis for a successive survey and trade-off analysis having as objectives the identification of technologies and / or products that could be used as baseline for the implementation of a prototype solution. The WiaB (Wave in a Box) Open Source Reference implementation of Wave technologies from the Apache Software Foundation Incubator Project was selected as environment for the development of the ESA’s WaveOps tool. The paper gives an overview of the tool design and development process and early feedback from users involved in the study.