The CDO: An innovative, flexible and modern Operations Control Centre for Europe's spaceport, French Guiana : Ground system architecture, resilience & operational excellence

Abstract

The CSG, Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana was granted major financing from ESA and CNES at the ESA's Council Ministerial in 2019 in order to implement crucial largescale renovations and modernization of the launch base. With the arrival of ARIANE-6 & VEGA but also new launchers such as CALLISTO & SPACERIDER, the core launch range must be renewed to be capable of offering game-changing flexible and attractive services. The program is called the "Core Launch Range Renewal" (CLRR).

The CLRR has 6 components, including the new Launcher Tracking & Flight Safety Operations Control Centre (known as the CDO). The CDO will group all of the CNES operators involved in the ground operations, within a dedicated state of the art 3 story building, including 7 operations centres and two dedicated data centers. The ground segment system has been completely redesigned, allowing flexibility within operations, by introducing automation of configuration and validation operator tasks.

The CDO-BLA (ground software segment) aims to improve human factors aspects for the flight tracking operators at the European Spaceport. The CDO-BLA brings with it a state of the art ground system architecture and an innovative Simulator called STONES (Simulator Training Operational Numerical Environment System).

The ground system architecture of the CDO-BLA introduces technical solutions providing high-scale flexibility for campaign operations & intrinsic resilience of the ground segment. The simulator digitally emulates complex external equipment such as the launcher, radars & telemetry antennas, providing operators with a life-like launch environment. For each campaign, operators will be able to perform training but more importantly qualify the CDO configuration ready for a launch, carry out maintenance all of which in parallel to different operations, without having to connect to external interfaces. The aim is to be able to reconfigure le CDO, between 2 launches, within 2 working days whilst aiming for operational excellence!