CSMC

The Central Station Monitoring & Control (CSMC) is an advanced system for monitoring and control (M&C) for satellite ground tracking stations.

CSMC system is installed and operational in the following ground stations of ESA ESTRACK network:

• Kiruna (Sweden)

• Malindi (Kenia)

In addition, CSMC is installed in the transportable station, formerly belonging to ESA and deployed in ESAC and currently belonging to INSA (in stand-by status until new location is selected for it).

It is also installed at ESA's Operation Centre (ESOC) in Germany, where remote operation of ESTRACK stations is carried out.

The CSMC system runs on a PC platform on a POSIX-compliant real-time operating system in UNIX (QNX). It has a set of basic capabilities coming from the GMCT (real-time supervision, real-time control functions, system management, data handling), as well as other advanced specific functions, including:

• Tailoring functions to simplify all activities related to the adaptation of the application to a specific station.

• Pre-defined command sequences linked to logical conditions (jobs) and specific timing (scheduling) execution.

• Multi-mission capabilities through definition of configuration tables that allow fast station re-configuration to support different missions.

• Concurrent operations that allow optimization of complex stations with different antennas and multiple reception chains, managing different resources independently and in a modular manner.

• Remote access services to allow moving all stations functionalities to other place for their remote operation. This is the case of Kiruna and Malindi sites, which are operated remotely from ESOC in Germany.

The CSMC system is integrated with different equipment for telemetry reception, ranking from specific ESA development to commercial systems (COTS), as for instance the CORTEX system from IN-SNEC.

Progressively, the CSMC has evolved extending its capabilities to fully automate the Kiruna station. Nowadays, this advance system is capable of automatically managing the resources of the station for the whole set of missions that Kiruna controls as well as detects failures reporting in real time for contingency activities and provides a remote link for operations in real-time.