# Presentation: 833864

## Polar Project Status October, 2002

## State of the Spacecraft

- _The Polar spacecraft and instruments are healthy_.  Only the plasma wave instrument and the MICS sensor portion of CAMMICE have suffered major faults; PWI now operates only during eclipse.
- Polar has initiated semi-annual attitude maneuvers to extend orbit normal operations for auroral imaging and optimize fuel usage.
- At ecliptic normal, despun platform control and auroral viewing is limited to an ~4.5 hour segment of each 17 hour orbit.

- CAMMICE, CEPPAD, EFI, HYDRA, MFE, PIXIE,
- PWI, SEPS,TIDE, TIMAS, UVI, VIS

- March 18, 2002 – half flip to ecliptic normal
- Fall 2002 – half flip to orbit normal
- Spring 2003 – full flip to orbit normal for southern winter auroral viewing
- Fall 2003 – half flip to ecliptic normal (permanent)

## Status of the Science

- Polar completed a prolonged observation *campaign through the dayside equatorial magnetopause region* with unprecedented high-temporal and spatial resolution. Now conducting a similar *campaign across the nightside equatorial  magnetosphere*.
- Polar, IMAGE, Cluster, Wind and Geotail will hold a collaborative workshop on the dayside magnetopause and cusp at Yosemite in Feb. 2003.
- Polar’s auroral science progressed to studies of the conjugate aurora. Some initial findings:
- Onset brightening first seen in southern hemisphere with northern hemisphere onset detected ~1 min. later
- Expansive phase brighter in southern hemisphere but located ~45min earlier in local time in the north.
- A JGR special section on "Causes of the Aurora" will appear soon.

- More than ten "great" conjugate events have been captured including this substorm onset on 1 Nov 2001

- thermal plasma, accelerated by circularly polarized waves, is regularly seen in the dayside boundary layers

## Mission Operation and Ground Data Processing: Then and Now

**Mission Operation and Ground Data Processing: Then and Now**

- ~7.625$M

- 4.144$M

- <4.172$M

- Polar, Wind and Geotail mission operations and ground data processing combined

## Status of the Mission Operation and Ground Data Processing Re-engineering

- Unattended spacecraft contacts for data playbacks
- Cross-training of flight operations personnel
- Re-hosting the CMS for security and obsolescence issues
**Re-hosting of NRT data service**
**Automation and re-hosting of KP processing**
**Simplifying online distribution of LZ and ancillary data**
**Automation of CD production**
**Re-hosting of the project web site**
- Streamlining NRT to include LZ processing and QL

- FOT cost
- Reduction

- CHDF and SPOF cost reduction

- Future
- of Wind

- 9 re-engineering tasks were originally identified:

**Completed, in “ring-out” phase**
- In acceptance testing
- Started
- In planning phase, initial testing complete

## Ground Data Processing:What was Lost?  What was Gained?

- ISTP services no longer provided:
- systematic collection of data products from associated missions
- KP CD distribution (impact is to Russian and South American data repositories)
- dedicated program assistance center
- off-hours data processing or problem response
- automated data pushing to clients
- quality control services of the ISTP/CDHF
- problem response and quality control services of the ISTP/SPOF

- Services improved:
- open ftp access to the full data set
- HTR data produced in addition to KP, software easily updated
- automated processing brings faster turn around of products

- With respect to Polar, Wind and Geotail, all data services previously required from the ISTP/CDHF and ISTP/SPOF have been retained.

## Who Gets the Credit: The Ground Data Processing Re-engineering team

- The success of the re-engineering effort is due to the cooperative efforts of several groups at GSFC who provided full- and part-time programming, system admin, design and management expertise.

| 632 | Bobby Candey |
| --- | --- |
| 696/583 | David Berger |
| 587 | Ryan Boller |
| 587 | Marlo Maddox |

| 587 | Jim Byrnes |
| --- | --- |
| 587 | Chris Howard |
| 423 | Jeff Lubelczyk |
| 632 | Rick Burley |
| 632 | Tami Kovalick |
| 632 | Natalie Jaquith  |
| 690 | Sandy Kramer |
| contr. | Jim Legg |

- The core team:

- With specific tasks & consulting by:

## Long Term Funding Profile

- The PWG infrastructure held within CSOC has decreased dramatically over the past year.  Some CSOC cost estimates for FY03 do not reflect this decrease.
- Conducting future mission operations under the current contracting mechanism does not appear to be economically feasible under the current long term funding profile.

## Contracting for Future Mission Services

| Option | Roadblock | Issues | Status |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Direct contract with Honeywell | Waiver of requirement for transfer to educational or research related location | Direct contract not permissible w/o extended competition cycle
ID/IQ, permission to add task to MIDEX ID/IQ  or start new ID/IQ | Preferred method: currently pursuing ID/IQ and waiver. |
| Contract with educational or research location | May want waiver on  6-month “pull-out” requirement | Contractual and management layer between NASA and MO team | USRA and Capital College are willing |
| Remain with CSOC |  | $$$
Uncertainty regarding post-CSOC
Operations reliability and safety
Changes remain costly and slow | Negotiations continue with regard to cost and staffing levels |

- A six-month NOI to remove mission operations services from the CSOC contract was submitted. Arrangements for continued operations are being actively pursued.

## Regarding Data Availability

- ISTP required special event archiving, rather than the full data set, as has become common with recent missions. Data accessibility was the responsibility of the project.
- Many Polar instrument teams have adjusted their data archiving and accessibility as is possible within their IT infrastructure and funding.
- Continuous HTR data from PWI, TIMAS, and TIDE.  CAMMICE and CEPPAD soon.
- TIDE, PWI and MFE provide interactive data processing via the web.
- Additional progress can be made over the next year:
- HYDRA has HTR data software, needs to convert format to CDF.
- UVI, VIS and PIXIE could archive continuous HTR rather than events.
- MFE should update IT infrastructure and/or PWG project should produce MFE KP.
- PWG project should create and host software library for access to LZ
- PWG project could encourage and/or host additional interactive data processing.
- Progress depends on:
- MO&DA contract mechanism that allows appropriate control over PWG re-engineering.
- Small augmentations to team funding for specific data processing/accessibility tasks.

## Summary

- The Polar spacecraft and instruments are healthy.
- Science progress over the past two years has been particularly robust. Prospects for further breakthroughs with respect to substorm and reconnection physics appears very strong.
- Science funding has been relatively stable. FY02 funding was, on average, 90% of FY01 levels.  Funding profiles for FY03 are budgeted at FY02 levels.
- The new mission operations and ground data processing systems are operating and serving the science community well.  Several important re-engineering tasks remain to be completed by the end of December 02.
- Conducting future mission operations under the current contracting mechanism does not appear to be economically feasible under the current long term funding profile.
- A six-month notice, effective Sept. 30, for discontinuation of CSOC services was submitted.
- Arranging for an alternate contracting mechanism for mission operations remains difficult.  Several avenues are being pursued.
- A plan to implement additional data accessibility improvements is under development.

## Backup Slides

## Summary: Then and Now

- ~7.625$M

- 2.6$M

- Polar, Wind and Geotail mission operations and ground data processing combined

## Review of the ISTP Data System(an independent entity to serve the worldwide SEC community)

- In addition to
- data processing and distribution services for GGS (Polar, Wind, Geotail) & IMP-8,
- data distribution services for SOHO and Cluster,
- operations and science coordination,
- ISTP served as a one-stop data source by
- consolidating and distributing data for 15 additional spacecraft, observatories and T&M programs
- providing extensive data and media integrity and quality services.

## Initial Courses of Action

- The ISTP project office was disbanded and reduction of past ISTP activities occurred during October and November of 2001.
- ISTP ground system services immediately reduced were:
- QuickLook data processing for special requests only,
- key parameter CD distribution reduced from ~12,300 to 156 per year,
- no key parameter re-processing,
- no key parameter software updates,
- no ground based or collaborative mission data processing or ingestion,
- no dedicated program assistance center,
- no system software updates excepting security patches,
- no test or development environment, and
- no off-hours data processing or problem response
- services of the ISTP SPOF and Command Management System were consolidated with the MOC and the project scientist's office.

- Note: Items in blue have been restored within the new PWG data processing environment

## Initial Courses of Action

- Contacted instrument teams regarding requirements for various operations and data services.
- Produced prioritized requirements document for Polar, Wind and Geotail. (available at http://tide.gsfc.nasa.gov/studies/POLAR/Polar_Ops_specs_25Jun02.pdf)
- Conducted six feasibility studies for alternative approaches
- 1) the present ground system management under CSOC (2 studies)
- 2) SPDF at GSFC under the direction of Bob McGuire
- 3) LASP at U Colorado under the direction of Bill Peterson
- 4) UC Berkeley under the direction of Bob Lin
- 5) the NSSTC under the direction of Dennis Gallagher

## Results of Feasibility Studies

- The following conclusions and actions resulted from the review of the studies:
- More software and system re-engineering needed to be pursued than provided for by the CSOC/CDHF study and CSOC estimates for flight operations.
- Eight re-engineering projects were identified to reduce the number of FTEs by three-quarters.
-  The re-engineering work should be performed under local control.
-  The UC Berkeley capabilities for hosting mission operations remain of interest.

- It was determined that a consolidation of all systems under the PWG Mission Operations Center (MOC) under an ID/IQ contract, as suggested by the SPDF study, offered the most cost effective solution with the least disruption to flight operations and the least risk to spacecraft health and safety.

## Plan for Re-engineering

## Re-engineering tasks with greatest short term payoff

- Unattended spacecraft contacts for data playbacks
- Cross-training of flight operations personnel
- Re-hosting the CMS for security and obsolescence issues
- Re-hosting of NRT data service
- Automation and re-hosting of KP processing
- Simplifying online distribution of LZ and ancillary data
- Automation of CD production
- Streamlining NRT to include LZ processing and QL

- Reduction of FOT

- Elimination of CHDF

- For the future
- of Wind

## Cross-training of FOT Personnel

- 6-7 console operators

- 2 CMS operators

- 2 spacecraft engineers

- 1 flight ops lead

- 1 DSN scheduler

- 4-5 console operators

- Ground
- System Engineer

- Instrument Engineer

- Flight ops
- lead

- DSN scheduler

- _Current_

- _After_

- 1 instrument engineer

- 1 ground system engineer

- Spacecraft Engineers

- still to be implemented

## Re-hosting the CMS for Security and Obsolescence Issues

- Notes:
- Core CMS software remains the same.

- spof1.gsfc.nasa.gov
- outside firewall, receives/relays
-  commands & verifications

- _Current_

- _After_

- CMS
- inside firewall, verifies command sequences, etc.,
- on older VMS machine

- Decnet “push”,
- identified as security risk

- spof7.gsfc.nasa.gov
- outside firewall, receives/relays
-  commands & verifications

- CMS
- inside firewall, verifies command sequences, etc.,
- re-hosted on new PC

- TCP/IP

- FORMATS
- secure relay across firewall

- Bldg. 2

- Bldg. 3

- Bldg. 3

- Bldg. 3

## Unattended Spacecraft Contacts for Data Playbacks

- Notes:
- Fewer attended contacts/fewer “double” attended contacts may mean less convenient or delayed command scheduling.
- Errors at DSN sites will mean result in several hours of data loss for Polar and several days of data loss for Wind.

- 6-8 console operators,
- covering 24x7, typically 4 shifts of two operators,
- Wind: 1 contact/3 days,
- Polar: 4 contacts/day,
- All attended contacts

- 4 console operators,
- covering 16x5,
- Wind: 1 contact/3 days,
- Polar: 3-4 contacts/day,
- TBD number of unattended contacts

- _Current_

- _Proposed_

- still to be implemented

## New Science Data System Overview

- The following Polar, Wind and Geotail services provided by ISTP were retained:
-  Near Real Time (NRT) data, open line access
-  Quicklook (spacecraft playback) data, online access
-  Level Zero data processing, online and CD distribution
-  Geotail Sirius data processing, online access
-  Key Parameter data processing, online and limited CD distribution
-  Ancillary data processing, online access

## Automation of KP Processing

- _Before_

- _Now_

- Notes :
- Routine quality checking of KP file production will reside with instrument teams.
- New high time resolution and Key Parameter software routines can be readily added by the instrument teams to the software library.

- TAE GUI interfaces on VAX
- to shift of operators

- Custom software & Oracle
- on Dec Alpha control processing

- Frozen software library

- Extensive quality checking

- Automated file processing

- Consolidation to single machine with ready access to data

- Software library converted to
- collection of individual processes

- Limited quality checking

## Simplifying Online Data Distribution

- _Before_

- _Now_

- Notes:
- Data access by open ftp
- LZ data older than 2-3 months is gzip compressed
- All data is public including NRT, QL, LZ, KP, ancillary

## Automation of CD Production

- Notes:
- DVDs for Polar_all, Wind_all and Geotail_all distribution
- Quality control of CD product to be performed by receiver; limited replacements possible

- _Before_

- _Now_

## Streamlining NRT Processing to Include LZ and QL

- Notes:
- Software port process _should_ be transparent to instrument teams.
- File types and formats would remain identical..
- Routine quality checking of LZ data files will reside with instrument teams.
- Reprocessing/replacement of LZ data may be limited to 1-2 months after receipt of files.
- There will be some data loss.

- Wind/Polar
- NRT on older microVaxs

- Wind/Geotail QL & LZ

- Bldg. 23

- Bldg. 3

- _Before_

- _After_

- NRT for Wind & Polar rehosted to Dec Alpha

- LZ for Wind & Polar rehosted to Dec Alpha

- Wind/Polar
- NRT on older microVaxs

- Wind/Polar
- NRT on older microVaxs

- Wind/Polar NRT
- (on older microVaxs)

- Unix using LabView & Oracle

- Polar QL & LZ

- Bldg. 3

- Geotail QL & LZ

## Schedule for Remaining Re-engineering Activities

- Oct

- Nov

- Dec

- Jan

- Feb

- Mar

- Apr

- 2002

- unattended spacecraft contacts for data playbacks

- cross-training of flight operations personnel

- transition to new CMS

- CD system

- streamlining NRT to include LZ and QL

- burning in of new PWG data system

- 2003

## Concerns on the Project Side

- With Respect to Mission Operations:
- Can we find a contractual environment for operations that is affordable and legal?
- Can the re-engineered system collapse to an affordable Wind-only environment after Polar and Geotail end of missions.
- What is the minimum data recovery percentage acceptable in light of fiscal constraints imposed on extended mission programs.

## Mass and energy coverage of the Polar particle instrumentation packages

- Polar remains the best instrumented spacecraft in the magnetosphere.

## Exploring the Sun-Earth System

**Exploring the Sun-Earth System**

- An alliance of solar, heliospheric and geospace missions for the coordinated study of Sun-Earth system dynamics.

## Alliance Objectives

- The SEC Alliance of spacecraft will expand the scientific productivity of the individual missions by fostering joint scientific analyses of phenomena that originate at the sun, propagate through interplanetary space, and impact the Earth's magnetosphere and upper atmosphere.

- Targeted objectives include:
- • Understand the coronal causes of heliospheric disturbances
- • Determine the evolution of disturbances within the heliosphere
- • Understand the coupling of solar wind energy to geospace
- • Understand the coupling of energy from the magnetosphere into the atmosphere

## Alliance Activities

- Sponsor analysis campaigns focused on specific science problems that bridge mission objectives. To date:
- • Energy transfer across the dayside magnetopause and through the cusp
- • Propagation of disturbances through interplanetary space

- Sponsor opportunities for collaboration:
- • Yosemite 2002: Magnetospheric imaging workshop
- • Geospace Workshop - Feb 2002
- • Joint SOHO-ACE workshop - Mar 2002
- • Spring AGU 2002: special sessions sponsored by Alliance members
- • Tentative Fall 2002: Interplanetary disturbance propagation workshop
- • Yosemite 2003: The cusp and dayside magnetopause

- Joint E/PO Activities
- • EOS Alliance article
- • Web home page
- • Aurora poster

- • Flyers/pamphlets on popular SEC science topics
- • Updating/re-issuing popular ISTP products