Linking and Combining Distributed Operations Facilities Using NASA's "GMSEC" System Architecture

NASA’s Goddard Mission Services Evolution Center (GMSEC) ground system architecture has been in development since late 2001 has successfully supported eight orbiting satellites and is being applied to several of NASA’s future missions. GMSEC can be considered an event-driven, service-oriented architecture built around a publish/subscribe message bus middleware. This paper briefly discusses the GMSEC technical approaches which have led to significant cost savings and risk reduction for NASA missions operated at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The paper then focuses on the development and operational impacts of extending the architecture across multiple mission operations facilities.