Jupiter II is the main control centre at the Guiana Space Centre, Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, inaugurated in 1996. It interfaces to other centres and launch facilities on the site, to assimilate overall status and readiness for launch. It is a large centre with over 30 operator consoles, each with customisable roles and capabilities, and has a highly redundant and reliable back-end server system and software. The facility authorises the launch of Ariane 5, Soyouz and VEGA rockets.
Telespazio UK was awarded the contract for the renewal of the launch authorisation and monitoring software for the Jupiter II Control Centre in order to advance and modernise its functionality and its future maintainability. The delivered system can support up to 50 operators and is driven primarily through an innovative touchscreen interface, designed for extensibility and reuse for ongoing and future launchers.
Preparation
The renewed Jupiter II Control Centre allows for the creation of multiple Base Configurations, permitting and encouraging reuse of prepared data across multiple launch campaigns. The Preparation Tool provides a specialised graphical interface for the configuration of operators and the control room consoles; definition of data interfaces to and from the system; complex state logic definition and simulation; and the creation of diagrammatic representations of state and input data for the provision of dynamic visualisations throughout an operation. Modern video conferencing and chat capabilities are configurable on a per-campaign basis, whilst archiving options allow for the safe storage and retrieval of configurations.
Operation
The renewed Jupiter II Control Centre is securely accessed via login controls. Privileged operators are able to control an operation and automatically login the associated consoles and operators. The System Control application is a fundamental component of the Control Centre and allows the connection and state monitoring of external and physical system components, whilst logging and data monitoring applications provide instant access to live event data. The applications available to an operator are specific to their role and provide all necessary monitoring and control capabilities for that function. Means to manually override launch authorisation or stop the countdown are provided to the Director of Operations.
Complete Monitoring and Control
The renewed Jupiter II system provides a secure and comprehensive solution for launch monitoring and authorisation, offering a highly configurable, yet intuitive interface – with system reliability at its core.