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Building 30 at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, is hallowed ground to people who are part of the civil space industry. At approximately 3:18 p.m. on July 20, 1969, a room full of expectant engineers exhaled a collective sigh of relief when Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, uttered the eight famous words: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”
While the crew of Apollo 11 made history on the moon, the staff at NASA Mission Control made history on Earth. The team in Building 30 remotely orchestrated the Moon landing from a control center that managed the navigation, precision and control of the mission.
Decades later, ground-based Mission Operations Centers — MOCs — remain a vital piece of every space mission not only for NASA, but also National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as well as a many other federal and commercial space programs.
“Thanks to Johnson Space Center and NASA’s lunar missions, we’re all familiar with the concept of mission operations centers. We have seen launches and control centers on TV and in the movies,” said Utah Gannon, associate director of program management at Raytheon, which develops and delivers to government and commercial customers advanced MOCs with end-to-end ground station support. “That model, of remotely controlling a space asset, has continued with dramatic changes in technology.”
As space missions and technologies continue to evolve and modernize, advanced MOCs must therefore evolve and modernize alongside them, according to Gannon, who said Raytheon is leading the charge by building a new generation of MOCs that are more scalable, automated, secure, modular, and adaptive than their predecessors.
Modern MOCs turn data into decisions
MOCs today aren’t just about shepherding and safeguarding astronauts. Equally, they’re about shepherding and safeguarding information.
“Mission operations centers enable mission data collection,” Gannon explained. “So, what we’re looking at today is how to efficiently execute the mission while reducing data latency for decision makers.”
The value of better and faster decision making is evident in the many missions Raytheon supports. One of the most compelling, for example, is NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a tennis court-sized space observatory that captures infrared light that has been traveling for billions of years.
“The data collected from James Webb is helping astronomers understand the universe, and that is invaluable,” said Gannon, who also cited as examples NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) and its Geostationary Littoral Imaging and Monitoring Radiometer (GLIMR). The former ingests and archives Earth science data for use by scientists, educators, and policymakers while the latter — NASA’s first planned ocean color hyperspectral imager for geostationary orbit — will provide a high-resolution view of physical and biological conditions in coastal waters.
There’s also NOAA’s Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC), through which government, industry, and academia collaborate to improve weather forecasting models; its Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS), which supports weather forecasting by integrating meteorological and hydrological data with satellite and radar imagery; its Next Generation Water Prediction Capability (NGWP) contract, through which Raytheon will develop advanced water models for flood forecasting; and its Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), which collects information from space about snow and ice cover, clouds, fog, aerosols, fire, smoke plumes, dust, vegetation health, and more.
Ground-based MOCs pilot, power, and protect the mission, and losing them would be devastating.
“Just think about all the weather and climate disasters that have happened over the past year. According to NOAA, there was more than $92 billion of impact in 2023 and hundreds of lives lost,” Gannon said. “When you can get data to decision makers quicker and enable them to make decisions faster, it becomes possible for people to protect their facilities, evacuate, and prepare.”
Next-gen MOCs promise increased speed, collaboration, capability
New MOCs can protect more infrastructure and save more lives by delivering on a handful of key benefits and capabilities, the first of which is a faster development pipeline.
“The space community is looking to shorten the time from procurement to on-orbit,” said Gannon, who noted that space operators today want to be able to launch new space capabilities within three years. “If the mission is operational in three years, that means the MOC is ready in two years, one year before launch to support the rehearsals and tests performed prior to launch. That requires a whole new way of doing procurement and engineering.”
To streamline MOC development, Raytheon is embracing modular technology, digital engineering, and agile ways of working. With modular technology — that is, solutions with maximum technology readiness and minimal non-recurring engineering — it can deliver pre-award demonstrations and prototypes that give customers a running start on their projects. With digital, or model-based, system engineering, it can maintain that initial momentum by enabling more and earlier collaboration with customers by identifying potential challenges and risks sooner rather than later. Finally, with agile development processes it can quickly adapt to volatile project conditions and changing mission requirements.
Innovation in operations is just as important as innovation in development, according to Gannon, who said Raytheon is creating operational efficiencies that allow customers to spend less money on sustaining MOCs and more on the actionable science that MOCs enable. Along with increased security and information assurance, its priorities include “monitored automated operations” and “lights-out” MOCs, which can autonomously process data and generate predictive insights with the help of artificial intelligence; 3D modeling, which improves situational awareness and creates a common operating picture across stakeholders; remote capabilities, which allow space operators to leverage a more diverse workforce; common visual frameworks, which reduce training needs; and flexible instead of monolithic architectures, which increase scalability, improve vendor interoperability and competition, extend the life of legacy systems, and ensure compatibility with emerging technologies.
“These are the challenges our customers have and where mission operations centers need to go,” concluded Gannon. “With larger fleets and more constellations in space, there’s a need to efficiently process, distribute, and store data. Increased automation and reduced operating costs, keeps these MOCs operational and helps to ensure these missions live on.”