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B.A. Stroozas, M.R. Gunter, G.C. Kaplan, R. Nevitt, K. Hartnett, and R.F. Malina
Center for EUV Astrophysics, 2150 Kittredge Street, University
of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
NASA's Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) satellite was launched on 7 June 1992. The EUVE Project is a joint collaboration between the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, MD, and the University of California at Berkeley (UCB). Since launch, GSFC has provided the overall project management and spacecraft operations functions; those of science and payload operations have been performed by the Center for EUV Astrophysics (CEA), a unit of the UCB Space Sciences Laboratory. Beginning in April 1996, UCB and GSFC began the process of jointly "outsourcing" EUVE spacecraft operations from GSFC to UCB. This transition was successfully completed in March 1997.
Operations automation has been, and continues to be, an integral part of the success of the EUVE mission. In February 1995, UCB worked with GSFC to implement automated telemetry monitoring techniques for the science payload. This automation allowed payload operations personnel to move from three-shift, 24-hour monitoring to a single-shift scenario. Further refinements and domain experience enabled the move to zero-shift "lights out" payload operations in January 1996.
GSFC and UCB have built on this operations automation experience and successfully applied the technology to spacecraft operations. The efforts have resulted in single-shift operations, a significant reduction in Flight Operations Team (FOT) staffing levels versus those at launch, and off-shift "lights out" automated spacecraft health and safety monitoring. This paper discusses the history of the EUVE spacecraft automation efforts at GSFC and UCB, the associated spacecraft risk management, and some ideas for future automation efforts.
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