Spaceflight Operations Services Grid Prototype

Abstract

NASA over the years has developed many types of technologies and conducted various types of science resulting in numerous variations of operations, data and applications. For example, operations range from deep space projects managed by JPL, Saturn and Shuttle operations managed from JSC and KSC, ISS science operations managed from MSFC and numerous low earth orbit satellites managed from GSFC that are varied and intrinsically different but require many of the same types of services to fulfill their missions. Also, large data sets (databases) of Shuttle flight data, solar system projects and earth observing data exist which because of their varied and sometimes outdated technologies are not and have not been fully examined for additional information and knowledge. Many of the applications/systems supporting operational services e.g. voice, video, telemetry and commanding, are outdated and obsolete. The vast amounts of data are located in various formats, at various locations and range over many years. The ability to conduct unified space operations, access disparate data sets and to develop systems and services that can provide operational services does not currently exist in any useful form. In addition, adding new services to existing operations is generally expensive and with the current budget constraints not feasible on any broad level of implementation. To understand these services a discussion of each one follows. The Spaceflight User-based Services are those services required to conduct space flight operations. Grid Services are those Grid services that will be used to overcome, through middleware software, some or all the problems that currently exists. In addition, Network Services will be discussed briefly. Network Services are crucial to any type of remedy and are evolving adequately to support any technology currently in development.