Analysis and prototyping of multi-conferencing capabilities required for Space Mission Control Room conferencing

Dona Liz Peter

German Aerospace Center

Abstract:

For Space Mission Control Room operations, voice communication has a high importance as it is used to transmit voice information, coordinate between different units and entities and to alert in case of unforeseen or critical events. The content of this paper is based on a GSOC study, which emphasizes on the core concept in these kind of environments, multi-conferencing. It discusses an implementation of this functionality within standard telephony systems. A multi-conferencing system is an environment where several voice conferences are running in parallel. It allows a user to participate in more than one conference at the same time. The multi-conferencing concept described here is not a commonly used public conferencing environment. It is most commonly used in control room conferencing for Space Mission Control and Air Traffic Control. The attempt is to implement multi-conferencing capabilities by reusing the basic features within a standard Private Automatic Branch Exchange (PABX) system. The basic call features of a standard telephony system are reused in order to achieve the goal.

Biography:

Operations Management of Satellite Ground Station of the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

• Deputy Operations Manager of EDRS Ground Station, Weilheim.
• Member of the team, representing DLR Ground Station, in CCSDS (The Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems). Part of the Space Link Services (SLS) : Coding and Synchronization Group (SLS-CS) and Space link Protocol Group (SLS-SLP).
• Preparation of the Normal Operation Procedures for EDRS Ground Station.
  
• Preparation of Commissioning Test Procedure for EDRS-A for the Antenna Management Center (AMC).
  
• Training the Ground Station Operators.
  
• Part of the emergency on-call service of Ground Station.
  
• Author of Ground Station User Manual for this specific Satellite Mission Project.