The Gaia payload uplink commanding system

TL;DR

This paper details the design, architecture, and lessons learned from the Gaia mission's uplink commanding system, including its automation and configuration control, to inform future space survey missions.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive uplink commanding system with an automatic interpreter and discusses lessons learned for future missions.

Findings

Effective system architecture for space mission commanding

Implementation of an automatic onboard activity interpreter

Lessons learned to improve future space survey operations

Abstract

This document describes the uplink commanding system for the ESA Gaia mission. The need for commanding, the main actors, data flow and systems involved are described. The system architecture is explained in detail, including the different levels of configuration control, software systems and data models. A particular subsystem, the automatic interpreter of human-readable onboard activity templates, is also carefully described. Many lessons have been learned during the commissioning and are also reported, because they could be useful for future space survey missions.