Operations and infrastructure
Maintenance of a manned spacecraft or operations of satellite communications infrastructure requires highly reliable and redundant technologies and operational experience. This experience and operations infrastructure has analogies with telemedicine applications where distant medical facilities or devices must be connected with high reliability.
For example search and rescue and telemedicine services require highly reliable, secure, and redundant infrastructure where the lives of patients in remote regions, victims of disasters, rescue workers, workers in extreme environments, or those in home care are at stake. Ground control centres and integrated operations linking these support infrastructures are required. Experience gained from many years of space operations, in human spaceflight and satellite control activities, and technologies developed to support complex space operations, can contribute well towards linking the world of information and communication technology (ICT), innovative technologies enabling remote healthcare and vital functions monitoring, tele-diagnosis systems, and the manifold potential new services that can be offered towards supporting the health and well-being of people wherever they are and whenever needed, in emergencies, as well as nominal situations.
