Mission Control

Lead: Andreas Giebel

At TUDSaT, the mission control development is a crucial aspect of our satellite operations, enabling us to ensure seamless communication, control, and monitoring of our cubesat mission TRACE. Our mission control system leverages the capabilities of Yamcs, a robust mission control framework implemented in Java. Yamcs provides a powerful and flexible platform for real-time telemetry processing, commanding, and archiving, which are essential for the successful management of satellite operations.In addition to utilizing Yamcs, we adhere to a subset of the ECSS package utilization standard (PUS), as prescribed by the European Space Agency (ESA). This standard facilitates reliable and efficient communication between our satellite and the mission control software, ensuring interoperability and adherence to industry best practices.The development of our mission control software predominantly involves two programming languages: Java and Python. Java is used extensively due to its integration with Yamcs, providing a stable and scalable environment for developing mission-critical applications. Python is employed to generate the Mission Database (MDB), a comprehensive repository of all satellite parameters, commands, and telemetry definitions. This MDB is essential for configuring Yamcs and ensuring accurate data processing and command execution. Finally our software will be tested on the actual satellite hardware, which is a crucial step in ensuring that the software behaves as expected in the real-world environment.Through the integration of Yamcs and the ECSS standard, TUDsat's mission control development team is dedicated to creating a robust and efficient system that supports the complex requirements of the TRACE mission, ensuring success from launch to end of mission.

Got interested?

If that sounds interesting to you and even if you don't have any experience with the technologies mentioned above, we are always looking for new motivated team members who are excited about launching a satellite and want to learn more about developing software systems in a team. If you are interested, feel free to contact us at TRACE MC.