Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Common Ground System (CGS) Architecture Overview and Technical Performance Measures

Abstract:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are jointly acquiring the next-generation civilian weather and environmental satellite system: the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). The Joint Polar Satellite System will replace the afternoon orbit component and ground processing system of the current Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) managed by NOAA. The JPSS satellites will carry a suite of sensors designed to collect meteorological, oceanographic, climatological and geophysical observations of the Earth.

The ground processing system for JPSS is known as the JPSS Common Ground System (JPSS CGS). Developed and maintained by Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services (IIS), the CGS is a multi-mission enterprise system serving NOAA, NASA and their national and international partners. The CGS provides a wide range of support to a number of missions. Originally designed to support S-NPP and JPSS, the CGS has demonstrated its scalability and flexibility to incorporate all of these other important missions efficiently and with minimal cost, schedule and risk, while strengthening global partnerships in weather and environmental monitoring.

The CGS architecture will be upgraded to Block 2.0 in 2015 to satisfy several key objectives, including: “operationalizing” S-NPP, which had originally been intended as a risk reduction mission; leveraging lessons learned to date in multi-mission support; taking advantage of newer, more reliable and efficient technologies; and satisfying new requirements and constraints due to the continually evolving budgetary environment. To ensure the CGS meets these needs, we have developed 48 Technical Performance Measures (TPMs) across 9 categories: Data Availability, Data Latency, Operational Availability, Margin, Scalability, Situational Awareness, Transition (between environments and sites), WAN Efficiency, and Data Recovery Processing.

This paper will provide an overview of the CGS Block 2.0 architecture, with particular focus on the 9 TPM categories listed above. We will describe how we ensure the deployed architecture meets these TPMs to satisfy our multi-mission objectives with the deployment of Block 2.0 in 2015.