SEISOP
Space Environment Information System for Operations

Results

SEISOP has been in use at ESOC since the beginning of 2011, and has been selected as a space weather precursor service by the Space Situational Awareness programme.

Technology

Data Warehousing, Web Services and Space Environment Modelling.

Development Team

The SEISOP server was developed by a consortium of European companies and research institutes: Deimos Space S.L.U., VEGA, Holos S.A., Uninova, Deimos Engenharia, S.A. and INTA. The SEISOP web interface was an internal development of the ESA Advanced Mission Concepts and Technologies Office.

Description

Spacecraft (S/C) are subject to hard space environment conditions that influence their performance and reliability as well as their lifetime. The space environment is defined by space weather conditions governed mainly by solar activity. The effects of space weather on a S/C are many: single event upsets, degradation of solar arrays, changes in orbit dynamics, loss of instrument functionalities and reduced quality of science data.

Therefore, knowledge and awareness of space weather events and conditions are key inputs for the decision making processes, e.g. about when and how long to protect the S/C instruments during hazardous space weather conditions.

The SEISOP system collects relevant space environment data and provides it to Flight Control Teams (FCT) through a state of the art web client interface, which provides real-time data visualisation, assessment and alarm monitoring. It also enables offline historical data analysis and correlation, as well as the creation of space weather reports.

In addition to its graphical user interface, SEISOP provides a set of open web service APIs to retrieve as well as inject new data in the system. To demonstrate these capabilities as a platform for the development and integration of space environment models, SEISOP includes a set of external modules implementing models for the forecasting of space weather activity (the Forecasting Module) and for estimating the effects of these events on S/C systems (G4MRES).

SEISOP is an evolution of the SEIS (Space Environment Information System) project, which was developed to support operations in matters concerning the space environment and its effects on S/C, by providing real-time, non-volatile and mission relevant space weather information. SEIS was used operationally by the INTEGRAL mission from 2005 until 2010.

SEISOP is a generic system and can support multiple missions. Currently spacecraft telemetry and orbital data from INTEGRAL, ENVISAT, XMM, VEX, MEX and Rosetta missions are available.

Additionally, SEISOP integrates space weather data originating from other ESA and NASA missions, such as SOHO, ACE and GOES, as well as ground-based measurements.

This data is collected and stored in a set of databases in near real-time. All the mission and space weather historical data is also kept in a data warehouse for efficient data analysis and cause-effect correlation.

Publications

• Donati, A., Pantoquilho, M., Di Marco, F., Oliveira, H. Space Weather Services for Space Mission Operations. In SpaceOps 2010, US, 2010.
• Donati, A., Di Marco, F., Pantoquilho, M., Negrin, S., Pimentao, J., Ponz, D., Falcao, A., Esteve, S. Space Environment Information System to support Satellite Operations. In IAC 2009, Daejeon, Korea, 2009.
• M. Pantoquilho, N. Viana, R. Ferreira, J. M. Pires, A. Donati, A. Baumgartner, F. D. Marco, L. Peñin, and T. Hormigo. SEIS: A Decision Support System for Optimizing Spacecraft Operations Strategies. In Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Aerospace Conference, Montana, USA, 2005.
• A. Donati, F. Di Marco, N. Viana, M. Pantoquilho, A. Baumgartner, J. Pires. Space Weather and Mission Control: A Road-map to an Operational Multi-Mission. In SpaceOps 2004, Montréal, Canada, May 2004.