Supporting engineers in missions
As Europe’s centre of excellence for spacecraft operations, ESA’s European Space Operations Centre is home to the engineering teams that control satellites in orbit, manage the ground station network, and design and build the systems on Earth that support missions in space.
Each mission is supported by a ‘ground segment’ – a complex mix of hardware, software and networks that enable engineers to fly a mission.
This enables teams to stay in contact with the satellite, monitoring its status and health and sending commands and receiving data from its instruments.
Discovering and solving problems
Engineers use the Ground Segment Reference Facility (GSRF) to experiment and tinker with systems under development, testing new or upgraded software or hardware to ensure these work together as expected, discovering and solving problems before they can affect live missions.
In addition to contributing to the high quality of ground segments at ESOC, teams at the GSRF provide system-level licensability and security tests in order to support European industry.
Services
Integration and testing service
A multi-disciplinary team-sharing platform
Integration and testing service
The GSRF is already available to our industrial partners to investigate complex problems and replicate operational issues in a safe environment and aims at offering 'integration and testing as a service‘ (I&TaaS) to the space community. This means providing a multi-disciplinary teamsharing platform, cross fertilising between technical domains, users and industry.
Innovative environment
Experts sharing their knowledge, experience, efforts and expectations
Innovative environment
The GSRF-provided environment promotes cross-fertilisation among engineering domains, and between engineering and operations, where experts can share their knowledge, experience, efforts and expectations among a multi-disciplinary team.
Representative environment
'Mission representativeness' − along the concept "test as you fly"
Representative environment
'Mission representativeness' − along the concept “test as you fly” − is ensured by the use of operational configurations, captured from a mission's operational environment.
Mission representative test chains
A full spectrum of systems
Mission representative test chains
The GSRF comprises a full spectrum of systems constituting a ground segment and the simulated space segment. Representative test chains range from simpler chains (mission control systems, network interface systems, ground stations and spacecraft models) to a chain containing the full ground segment (mission control system, network interface system, network delay simulator, signal processing and conversion, antenna and spacecraft simulator).
Operationally representative test scenarios
Based on real operation scenarios
Operationally representative test scenarios
The test cases used in this environment have been developed based on real operation scenarios relying on real experiences at mission control. These operational scenarios have been made generic so to be adaptive to any mission-specific configuration and making them portable from one mission to another. This makes these test cases valid across different test chains, for different system versions and ready to support different mission configurations.
Automation
Automated end-to-end test cases precisely replicating user actions
Automation
The GSRF‘s automated end-to-end test cases precisely replicate user actions by mimicking the actions of the user at the human-machine interface. The automated test cases have been developed in order to be widely reusable by making them modular and parametrised. The set of automated test cases is rather extensive: 12 hours continuous testing can be automatically executed overnight on different versions of the mission operations infrastructure.
R&D studies
Research and development studies to explore and validate new concepts
R&D studies
The GSRF conducts research and development (R&D) studies needed to explore and validate new concepts, to demonstrate the suitability and the maturity of new technologies and to harmonise and converge the various integration and testing processes and environments.
Our objective
Our objective is to develop an 'End-to-end (E2E) Reference Environment‘ spanning all segments of a mission, providing E2E demonstration and validation of capabilities required to meet present and future mission objectives.
We aim to continually enhance collaboration with European industry, national space agencies and a diverse range of organisations and partners in the spacecraft operations community.