The Herschel-Planck mission data systems: a challenge for the 21st century

The European Space Agency's Space Operations Centre (ESOC), in Darmstadt, Germany, has been involved in the development of operational spacecraft simulators and mission control systems (MCS) for ESA projects over the past 35 years. Together, these form the mission data systems (MDS) for each project. This paper presents the mission data systems for the Herschel-Planck project, which is part of ESA's astronomical mission family. The Herschel and Planck spacecraft are planned to be launched together by Ariane 5 in 2007 and will both be in Lissajous orbits around the L2 point, approximately 1.5 million km from Earth in the anti-sun direction. Herschel and Planck are also the first ESA missions to adopt the promising concept of a "smooth transition", involving both space and ground segment development, which can be summarized as "Reuse and share rather then redevelop". This paper describes ESOC's contribution to the implementation of this concept, the benefits this brings to the project and to the mission data systems developments in particular. The Herschel-Planck project is a further step in the continuous improvement of the mission data systems (MDS) development process at ESOC. The paper describes a new development strategy that emphasises the importance of efficient and effective validation in a world of scarce resources and less and less time to develop systems that are more and more complex. The approach adopted by the Herschel-Planck team maximises the usage of MDS infrastructure test tools for mission control system and simulator validation and introduces system automated testing based on new tools. It also adopts solutions aimed at alleviating the dependence of the simulator development on external inputs during the different stages of its development