Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Common Ground System (CGS) Multimission Support

Abstract:

NOAA & NASA are acquiring the next-generation civilian operational weather satellite: Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). Contributing the afternoon orbit & ground system (GS) to replace current NOAA POES Satellites, its sensors will collect meteorological, oceanographic, climatological & solar-geophysical data. The JPSS Common Ground System (CGS), consisting of C3 and IDP segments, is developed by Raytheon. It now flies the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) satellite, transferring data between ground facilities, processing them into Environmental Data Records for NOAA & DoD weather centers, and expanding to support JPSS-1 in 2017.

CGS now does data processing (DP) for S-NPP, creating many TBs/day across >2 dozen environmental data products (EDPs). This doubles after JPSS-1 launch. But CGS goes well beyond this by providing data routing support to other global missions.

Those other missions are: GCOM-W1, Coriolis/Windsat, EOS, NSF’s McMurdo Station, Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP), and POES & MetOp satellites. Each system orbits 14 times/day, downlinking data 1-2 times/orbit at up to 100s of MBs/sec, to support the creation of 10s of TBs of data/day across 100s of EDPs.

CGS’s flexible, multimission capabilities offer major chances for cost reduction & improved information integration across the missions. Raytheon has a unique ability to provide complex, highly-secure, multi-mission GSs. A flexible, expandable and virtualized modern GS architecture is vital -- CGS offers the solution.

CGS supports 5 global ground stations receiving S-NPP & JPSS-1 mission data. These, linked with high-bandwidth commercial fiber, quickly transport data to the IDP for EDP creation & delivery. CGS data latency will be < 80 minutes. CGS leverages the fiber network to provide added support to many other missions.

The JPSS CGS is a mature, tested solution for support to operational weather forecasting for civil, military and international partners and climate research. It features a flexible design handling order-of-magnitude increases in data over legacy systems and meets demanding science accuracy needs. The Raytheon-built JPSS CGS gives the full GS capability, from design & development through operations & sustainment, laying the foundation for future evolution to support more missions.