EuroSciPy 2024

The Mission Support System and its use in planning an aircraft campaign
08-29, 11:30–11:50 (Europe/Berlin), Room 7

The Mission Support System (MSS) is an open source software package that has been used for planning flight tracks of scientific aircraft in multiple measurement campaigns during the last decade. It consists of many components, a data-retrieval tool chain, a wms server which creates 2-D figures from 4-D meterogical data. A client application for displaying the figures in combination with the planned flight track and other data. For data exchange between participants a collaboration server is used. The talk describes how we used these components for a campaign.


The presentation shows why we need software and data to cooperatively manage an aircraft for our missions. We have to figure for a group of instruments the optimal flight path through the upper trosposphere / lower stratosphere.

After a short introduction into the complexity of aircraft campaigns I want to show the components of the software package.
- our documentation
- a data retrieval tool chain for 4-D model forecast data.
- Based on the data and the aim a modified WMS Server which shows a Side View and a Linear View upon the common Top View
- An UI which interacts with this kind of server and the possibility to work collaborativly on a flight track.
- As summary how the software was used in a recent campaign


Expected audience expertise: Domain

none

Expected audience expertise: Python

none

Abstract as a tweet

The presentation highlights the need for software and data to optimize flight paths through the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere for a group of measurement instruments to produce scientific results.

Category [Scientific Applications]

Geo Science

Public link to supporting material

https://mss.readthedocs.io/en/stable/

Project Homepage / Git

https://github.com/open-mss/MSS

Reimar Bauer is an expierenced scientific programmer from Jülich, Germany. Reimar is the Maintainer of the Mission Support System, a software developed for scientific flight planning. During development, he rely on principles such as sociocracy, semantic versioning and open communication through tickets and pull requests.

He works at the Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH. With some 7000 employees and a unique research infrastructure, Forschungszentrum is one of the major interdisciplinary research centres in Europe.
Employees research to provide comprehensive solutions to the grand challenges facing society in the fields of energy and the environment, information and brain research with the aim of providing society with options for action facilitating sustainable development.

Reimar has experience in organizing various events, from barcamps to large conferences. For several years he was on the board of the Python Software Verband and have contributed to a number of Python events in German-speaking countries. He is also a Fellow of the Python Software Foundation.