Efficient spacecraft test and operations with the NEAR ground system

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) ground system was designed in keeping with the intent of the Discovery program to reduce development and mission operations costs for planetary missions. To do this, several nontraditional steps were taken in its development to increase efficiency: combining...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Johns Hopkins APL technical digest 1998-04, Vol.19 (2), p.247-256
Main Authors: Whitworth, Gary G, Somers, Anthony J, Stratton, William C
Format: Article
Language:English
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) ground system was designed in keeping with the intent of the Discovery program to reduce development and mission operations costs for planetary missions. To do this, several nontraditional steps were taken in its development to increase efficiency: combining the ground system development projects for integration and test (I&T) and mission operations; committing to develop a single system to support both I&T and mission operations; competitively procuring a commercial off-the-shelf command and control system; and strategically networking the entire ground system to allow for reconfiguration and geographic dispersion. Efficiency was further enhanced by taking advantage of the state of the art in open system architectures, and also by using existing operations infrastructure when cost-effective. (Author)
ISSN:0270-5214