On Representative Spaceflight Instrument and Associated Instrument Sensor Web Framework

Abstract

Sensor Web-based adaptation and sharing of space flight mission resources, including those of the Space-Ground and Control-User communication segments, could greatly benefit from utilization of heritage Internet Protocols and devices applied for Spaceflight (SpacelP). This had been successfully demonstrated by a few recent spaceflight experiments. However, while terrestrial applications of Internet protocols are well developed and understood (mostly due to billions of dollars in investments by the military and industry), the spaceflight application of Internet protocols is still in its infancy. Progress in the developments of SpacelP-enabled instrument components will largely determine the SpacelP utilization of those investments and acceptance in years to come. Likewise SpacelP, the development of commercial real-time and instrument co-located computational resources, data compression and storage, can be enabled on-board a spacecraft instrument and, in turn, support a powerful application to Sensor Web-based design of a spaceflight instrument. These are presently only co-located with the spacecraft Command and Data Handling System (C&DH). Sensor Web-enabled re-configuration and adaptation of structures for hardware resources and information systems on instrument level will commence application of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and other aerospace programmable logic devices for what this technology was intended. These are a few obvious potential benefits of Sensor Web technologies for spaceflight applications on instrument level. However, they are still waiting to be explored. This is because there is a need for a new approach to spaceflight instrumentation in order to make these mature sensor web technologies applicable for spaceflight. In this paper we present an approach in developing related and enabling spaceflight instrument-level technologies based on the new concept of a representative Instrument Sensor Web (ISW). This concept widens the scope of heritage sensor webs and facilitates the application of sensor web technologies to complex representative instruments onboard future spacecrafts.