Sara De La Fuente
Sara de la Fuente is an Aerospace Engineer with more than two decades of experience working in the design and execution of space operations for the European Space Agency (ESA). Her experience in ESA missions is very extensive, working in the Flight Dynamics Interplanetary Team for missions like Mars Express and Rosetta, in the Galileo Constellation Ground Control Segment Team, and in the Planetary Science Ground Segment Team for BepiColombo and JUICE missions.
She has also extensive experience in team coordination and technical leadership in Space Operations and Development, working as Flight Dynamics Engineering Team Coordinator for the European satellite navigation constellation Galileo, and as Science Operations Development Team Coordinator for the BepiColombo probe to Mercury.
She is currently the Science Operations and Software Development Manager of the RHEA Group Service Team at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) for the following Planetary missions: Mars Express, ExoMars TGO, BepiColombo, JUICE & EnVision.
Session
SPOT: A collaborative framework for Planetary Science Operations Planning
Sara de la Fuente, Iñaki Ortiz de Landaluce, Javier Espinosa,
Fernando Félix-Redondo, Pablo Turrión, Sergio Ibarmia, Juan de Pablos, Ángeles Cuevas
RHEA Group
This abstract presents the Science Planning Operational Tool (SPOT), designed and developed by the RHEA Group team, located at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESA/ESAC), responsible of the Payload Operations and Software Development Service for ESA Planetary Missions.
SPOT is a a collaborative framework to support the planning of Planetary scientific payload operations along the entire missions life, including the long cruise phases. SPOT is already being used by BepiColombo and JUICE missions and it is going to be adapted soon to other missions like the planetary defence mission HERA.
BepiColombo is an interdisciplinary ESA mission launched in October 2018 to explore Mercury in cooperation with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). A long cruise phase of 7.2 years toward the inner part of the Solar System will bring BepiColombo to Mercury, after nine planetary flybys, one to the Earth, two to Venus and six to Mercury.
JUICE -JUpiter ICy moons Explorer -is the first large-class mission, launched in April 2023 and arriving at Jupiter in 2031. It will spend at least three years making detailed observations of Jupiter and three of its largest moons, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. A long cruise phase will bring JUICE to Jupiter and its moons, after four planetary flybys, three to the Earth and one to Venus.
SPOT provides operational capabilities to generate science observations, based on geometry conditions, define scenarios for the different phases of the mission, schedule observations according opportunity windows, and simulation of the scientific payload timelines and the main spacecraft resources used, such as power consumption or generated data volume. SPOT can also generate payload operational products, using the Command Request File format (CRF), in compliance with the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) tools: Mission Planning System (MPS), Mission Control System (MCS) and Mission Information Database (MIB).
In addition, SPOT incorporates advanced 2D/3D visualisation tools that can display, among others, geospatial data sets or the spacecraft attitude, supporting operators and scientific users in the planning process, providing for example surface coverage data results. All the information and generated products are centralised and version-controlled, and privacy and confidentiality of the data is ensured through user authorisation and authentication processes.
The SPOT framework was originally design and developed for BepiColombo and has already supported the scientific payload teams during the Near Earth Commissioning Phase (NECP), the periodic payload check-outs and the science operations carried out during