Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Common Ground System (CGS) Use of Space Link Extension (SLE) Protocol

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 Command, Control & Communications (C3) and Interface Data Processing (IDP) segments, is developed by Raytheon. CGS 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 Block 2.0 (B2.0) is the recent CDR-approved design to support both the current S-NPP and upcoming JPSS-1 missions. In B2.0, many important improvements were made to evolve CGS C3. One of those improvements is the addition of SLE services. The CCSDS SLE Protocol standard facilitates and significantly improves GS-to-Data Center communications. The CGS SLE architecture provides data reliability and resource scheduling and is scalable to support added missions.

The JPSS CGS is a mature, tested solution for supporting operational weather forecasting for civil, military, and international partners as well as climate research. It features a flexible design that handles order-of-magnitude increases in data over legacy satellite ground systems and meets demanding science accuracy needs. The JPSS CGS is expandable to support additional ground station service providers with or without the deployment of additional JPSS ground hardware by using standard SLE Transfer Service protocol and offers opportunities to reduce costs and improve information Integration across missions. The Raytheon-built JPSS CGS provides the full common ground capability, from design and development through operations & sustainment. These features lay the foundation for the CGS future evolution to support additional missions.