1. Students’ Space Association
Warsaw University of Technology
Satellite operation on ESEO’s (European Students
Earth Orbiter) OPER team example.
Artur Łukasik

2. Plan of the presentation:
ESEO Satellite (overview)
Mission Objectives and specification
Main space segment characteristics
Ground segment main tasks
Operations planning software
High Priority Commands and
Emergency Operations

3. ESEO Satellite
One of ESA’s ‘’Hands-On’’ Educational projects.
About 20 teams from all over the Europe
4 Polish teams
ESEO satellite has the following
mission objectives
To take pictures of Earth from the
orbit for educational outreach
purposes
To provide measurements of the
plasma and radiation environment in
Earth orbit and space plasma
measurement in Earth orbit
To test new technologies for future
education satellite missions
Exploitation by radio-amateur
community after the end of operative
phase

4. Mission Objectives and specification:
Mission technological objectives:
Test of Micro Camera Device (uCAM)
Test of Reaction Wheel
Test of Star Tracker
Mission main scientific objectives:
TriTel-S three-dimensional Dosimeter
Langumir plasma diagnostic probe
The LET (Linear energy transfer) spectra of the cosmic
radiation, the absorbed dose and dose equivalent
The electron density and electron temperature

5. Main space segment characteristics:
Time-tagged commands
Schedule for up to 5 days in advance
ESEO SW (software), three different on board schedulers are
foreseen. In detail they are:
Satellite TC scheduler: dedicated to general purpose planned
operations
Payloads TC scheduler: dedicated to payloads operations (e.g.
acquisition, calibration, configuration) and telecommands for ACS
(Attitude Control System) target pointing manoeuvres.
Contact Table scheduler
The schedulers can be managed by telecommands from the
ground segment. The following operations are allowed:
Commands can be added in the scheduler.
The scheduler can be suspended (disabled) and resumed.
All commands from a certain time stamp upwards can be removed
A single command can be disabled

6. Ground segment main tasks:
The ESEO Ground Segment will perform the following main tasks:
monitor and control the ESEO satellite during all the phases of
the mission, both in nominal and contingency conditions;
receive users request and elaborate a Mission Planning
accordingly;
receive Payload data, process it and make it available to users;
handle on board software maintenance, updating and
patching;
evaluate and predict spacecraft dynamic
behavior;
manage Satellite and Payload databases
manage and coordinate the different
Ground Stations.

7. Operation planning process (part1):
 Nominally plan updates – every day
 During weekends and holidays reduced up to one time
per three days
 Ground segment team working 1 shift a day, five days a
week.
 Two ground stations: GS North( in Europe) - satellite
monitoring, data download and routine maintenance
operations
 and GS South (in New Zealand) – uploading operation
plan
1. The baseline plan containing the routine operations for
satellite monitoring, control and maintenance.
2. Payload data aquisition requested by users.

8. Operation planning process (part2):
- System timeline:
Collecting users Requests
Checking requests for consistency with respect to the
overall system constraints
The operation plan is then harmonized. A baseline
Operation Plan is generated. And splited into two parts:
The satellite operation plan
The ground station operation plan (time of contacts,
antenna pointing angles, etc.)
The plan follow up is returned to the Users to provide
them with feed-back information

9. Operation planning process (part3):
- System timeline (continued):
The frozen operation plan is converted by the Mission
Control Centre, into the corresponding time tagged
telecommands list
The telecommand list is then uploaded to the satellite
by the TMTC (Telemetry-Telecommand) station
The satellite executes the time tagged telecommands to
get the payload data and store them onboard
The data remains stored on-board till it can be
downloaded according to memory management and
satellite contacts
Data are downloaded and received by the ground
station

10. High Priority Commands & Emergency
Operations:
List of the HPC foreseen for ESEO satellite is:
Switch to OBDH (On Board Data Handling) Main section
Switch to OBDH Redundant section
Reset active OBDH
Watchdog reset (Necessary to avoid automatic change of OBDH section)
ON/OFF commands to S-Band transmitter
Reset TMTC (Telemetry-Telecommand unit)
Emergency operations will define at least the following tasks:
Identification of the problem.
Use of simulation tools (simulators, satellite elements engineering model) for
testing the recovery procedures.
Generation of the plans for dealing with the recovery actions.
Execution of contingency procedures.
Verification of the recovery.
Restart of the routine operations.

11. Thank you for your attention!
Artur Łukasik
Financial Officer of Students’ Space Association
gobbo@tlen.pl
+48 504 998 074