Lessons Learnt from Micro-Satellites On-Board Operations

The definition and the validation of Flight Operations are critical and time consuming tasks. A process has been set up in order to improve these activities from an efficiency and quality point of view. This process is first introduced together with μ-satellites specific challenges. One main difficulty was that the same team had to prepare the flight operations for three μ-satellite missions in the same year. Reuse from one mission to another was possible thanks to the use of the same generic satellite platform. It was also a requirement to successfully define and qualify flight operations for three missions in parallel and the satellite operational team had to be organized consequently. DEMETER was the first μ-satellite of the Myriade product line to be launched in June 2004. Its mission aims at the study of ionosphere electromagnetic perturbation due to natural geophysics phenomena. Six months later PARASOL satellite (part of Aqua Train scientific mission) and ESSAIM (defence mission) were also put into orbit. Despite mission satisfactory results, many satellite anomalies were to be coped with. In about one year, not less than fourteen safe modes were triggered onboard PARASOL and DEMETER. Operational impact of frequent anomalies and the lessons learnt are explained.