A NASA/USGS Collaboration to Transform Earth Observing 1 Into A Commercially Viable Mission

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1 Paper for SpaceOps 2002 in Houston, TX October 9-12, 2002 A NASA/USGS Collaboration to Transform Earth Observing 1 Into A Commercially Viable Mission Dan Mandl (301) dan.mandl@gsfc.nasa.gov EO-1 Mission Director NASA/GSFC 1. Introduction Paul Cruz (605) cruzp@usgs.gov Senior Systems Engineer Raytheon ITSS/USGS Stuart Frye (301) fryes@pop400.gsfc.nasa.gov EO-1 Systems Engineer MitreTek Inc./NASA Joe Howard (301) jhoward@pop500.gsfc.nasa.gov EO-1 Flight Operations Team Honeywell, Inc./NASA The New Millenium Program Earth Observing 1 (EO-1) Mission, after completing its baseline requirements successfully after one year of operations ending November 20, 2001, sought to simultaneously increase utilization of the on-orbit resource and reduce the cost of operations to the point of attaining commercial viability. To accomplish this objective, a collaborative partnership between NASA and the US Geological Survey (USGS) was forged to take advantage of the inherent strengths of each agency. The USGS with its land remote sensing customer base, its ground station capabilities, and its science data processing, archive, and distribution facility (the EROS Data Center in Sioux Falls South Dakota) is efficient at handling customer orders and delivering cost effective scientific data to a world-wide audience. NASA with its spacecraft operational expertise resident at the Goddard Space Flight Center, is efficient at spacecraft command, control, and tracking. With the combined capability in existence for only eight months thus far, the overall mission costs have steadily come down, the number of scenes collected and processed per day continues to go up, the turn-around time to deliver products to customers continues to decrease, and the number of users subscribing to purchase data products is on track towards self sufficiency. In addition, these new instrument technologies and capabilities are continuing to be exploited for the benefit of all mankind. This paper explores the collaborative partitioning of tasks including the streamlining of various processes, the old versus new architecture and the metrics that are measuring the success of this effort. 2. Mission Overview During its first year in operations, the New Millennium Program s Earth Observing 1 (EO-1) mission was a technology validation mission. It was managed by the NASA Goddard Space 1

2 Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and completed its one year mission on November 20, 2001 as a resounding success. The purpose of the mission was to flight-validate revolutionary technologies that will contribute to the reduction of cost and increase of capabilities for future land imaging missions. In the EO-1 mission, there were eleven technologies including the three instruments that were flight validated One of the key operational highlights is that EO-1 flies in formation 1 minute behind Landsat. This allowed taking of paired scenes with Landsat to compare how the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) images rates against the Landsat instrument when taking the same piece of real estate. Figure 1 pictorially depicts this formation flying along with the comparative swathes taken by each of the instrument. Figure 2 shows a sample image taken by the ALI which was subsequently featured on Fox News. Figure 1 Pictorial EO-1 Mission Overview. 2

3 Figure 2 Sample scene by ALI: LaPlata, Maryland tornado scar scene taken on 5/1/2002 was shown on Fox News 3. Establishing the Partnership Between NASA and USGS In the summer and fall of 2001, meetings were held between NASA headquarters management, Goddard management and USGS to figure ways to make EO-1 at least partly pay for its operations through the sale of the images that it takes. It was felt that EO-1 was a valuable resource as evidenced by all of the inquiries about possibly taking over operations by other entities. By making use of the strengths of USGS which was the handling a diverse set of customers for taking orders, billing and then planning the scenes that needed to be taken and making use of the strength that GSFC had in operating EO-1, it was felt that in this way we could most efficiently run the EO-1 operations to serve the science community. Discussions were also held with the Air Force, Navy and NOAA to participate in this partnership. The model we used is the Landsat model whereby USGS sells Landsat scenes to pay for Landsat operations. The partnership began officially in January 2002 It was determined that to make EO-1 commercially viable, the key needed changes would be to increase the number of daily Data Collection Events (DCE s), decrease the cost of taking a DCE, 3

4 increase the customer base and decrease the turnaround time to process scenes. Of course, there is a relationship between these factors. The target was to earn enough revenue to pay for the operations or at least to the degree possible minimize the cost to each of the agencies. Realistically, if we reached our theoretical maximum of scenes taken per day and account for cloud obscured DCE s which are not saleable, we figured that we could pay for approximately 2/3 of the operations. The roles for each agency were laid out. NASA s role was as follows: Maintains ownership of spacecraft Command and control operations Eventual satellite decommissioning and de-orbit The USGS role was as follows: Real-time Telemetry and Command Customer Interface Data Capture ALI/Hyperion Scheduling and Tasking Data processing and product distribution Long term archive X or S Band Playback Real-time Telemetry and Command McMurdo (Launch / Maneuvers) Svalbard, Wallops (Backup / Launch) Mailed Science Data Tapes Real-time Telemetry Launch Support TDRSS/ WSC X and S Band Playback Real-time Telemetry Command Alaska (Prime) Mail High Rate Data Tapes Mail High Rate Data Tapes N I S N T C P / I P WARP PB, sent via mailed tapes RT SOH - VC0 PB SOH Post Pass- VC1 Sig Events - VC2 Tables Memory Loads Commands Landsat 7 State Vctrs Doppler / Angles Landsat 7 State Vectors Mission Operations Center (MOC) at GSFC Core Ground System (CGS) - Command and control - Health and Safety monitoring - Trending - CMS - Ancillary Data Processing Data Processing System (DPS) - X & S Band Science Data Processing -Level 0 + Mission Ops Planning & Support System (MOPSS) - Planning and Scheduling Flight Dynamics System (FDS) - Orbit - Attitude Formation Flying Coordination Landsat 7 MOC at GSFC Schedules of Landsat 7 Scenes Science Scheduling Plan Daily target list and DCE ancillary data Processed Data Hyperion L0 data Science Validation Team NRA Stennis Investigators Mission Science Office Instrument Scientists EO-1 Mission Science Office Mission Science Planning Office Science Planning LTAP TRW Process Hyperion level 1 data Figure 3 Ground System Configuration During the First Year of Operations Calibration Scientists, JPL EO-1 Scene Requests Science Validation Facility Functions for the SVF: ALI Level-1 Processing AC Level-1 Processing Data Archive Data Distribution Image Assessment Calibration Hyperion L0 & L1 data Previous to the partnership agreement, NASA operated all aspects of the ground system and the related operations. Figure 3 depicts a high level overview of the ground system during the first year of operations. Figure 4 shows how the ground system and the responsibility for each of the 4

5 Figure 4 Ground System Configuration During the Second Year of Operations With Partnership In Place Customer Mission Operations Center Planning & Tasking User Services (DAR Orders) ALI L1 NASA GN Stations Mail X-band Tapes Data Processing System HYP L0 TRW TRW Process Hyperion to L1 WWW Site ALI & HYP L0 HYP L1 L0/L1 Product Distribution Ordering & Server Processing EDC Archive NASA USGS TRW Figure 5 High Level Data and Processing Flow 5

6 components were divided up. Figure 5 shows a consolidated high level data and processing flow diagram and how the process responsibilities were divided up. Once the combined architecture and shared operations was in place, the next order of business, although done somewhat in parallel, was developing the customer base. This was accomplished by having discussion with potential customers. This included discussion with DoD, NOAA and NRL as potential anchor customers who could order large amounts of images, other government agencies and universities and commercial industry such as oil/gas, mining and agriculture. There were also discussions with international interests. We also had to help develop a story on the usefulness of the instrument technology. Although the majority of the story was generated by the EO-1 Science Validation Team, NASA and USGS had to advertise things such as Figure 6 to further stimulate interest. LandSat Analysis Hyperspectral Analysis No Data Hardwood No Data Open field Red Maple Red Oak Hemlock/ Hardwood Mix Mixed Conifer Norway Spruce Softwood Grass / Fields Mixed Hardwood Hardwood/ Conifer Mix Red Pine Spruce Swamp White Pine Hardwood Bog Analysis by Mary Martin University of New Hampshire Figure 6 Comparative utility of Hyperion Image and Landsat Image 4. Streamlining Operational Processes at NASA and USGS In the interest of reaching our sub-goals of increasing the number of DCE s EO-1 takes daily, decreasing the cost of taking a DCE, increasing the customer base and decreasing the turnaround time to process scenes, both USGS and NASA worked to continuously improve their operational 6

7 processes. Figure 7 shows a consolidated chart of improvements made over time to bring the average cost of a DCE down. Activities included were in both agencies. Cost ($) Months Since Launch N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A Launch Added Hobart and Goddard Ground Stations Automated Planning, Scheduling, and Scene Tracking Developed Capability for Two DCEs / Orbit Added Ground-Based Cloud Cover Predictions Quick Turnaround Scene Request & Expedited Data Delivery Automated Control Center Ops Scheduling & Data Processing Moved to EROS Data Center Streamlined Image Sequencing EDC X-Band Ground Station Operational Added Two Path Away Pointing Capability Figure 7 Process Improvements at NASA and USGS and resultant streamlining of DCE cost From the USGS perspective some of the processes they needed to put in place as improvements internal to USGS/EDC were the following: Phase 1 Operational April 2002 Customer Interface Hyperion & ALI Level 0 Processing ALI Level 1 Processing Product Distribution Level 0 Product Archiving X-band Data Capture (5.4M Antenna) Phase 2 Operational May 2002 Automated Customer Service Interface o Main EO-1/USGS Page: eo1.usgs.govearth Explorer (EE) Page: is automatic archive an billing/accounting system Level 0/ALI Level 1 Integration w/edc Infrastructure Phase 3 Operational June 2002 In-house stand-alone Hyperion Level 1 Processing Capability Hyperion processing interface to EE/DORRAN Expedited Data Processing Demonstration for USAF, NASA National Hazards Support Hyperion/ALI Value Added Processing 5. Some Metrics as a Result of NASA Streamlining of its Operations 7

8 EO-1 Dual Images per DOY Count Figure 10 Trend toward using more dual paired scenes daily Figure 10 depicts that trend towards increased use of a capability developed to allow EO-1 to take scenes within 23 minutes of each other. This was not possible early in the mission. Although not indicated on the chart, recently there have been days when dual scenes have been used 7 times in one day DOY (yy-doy) Dec-00 Jan-01 Feb-01 Mar-01 Apr-01 May-01 Jun-01 Jul-01 Aug-01 Sep-01 Oct-01 Nov-01 Dec-01 Jan-02 Feb-02 Mar-02 Apr-02 May-02 Jun-02 Number of Users Instrument Validation Science Validation Other Gov't - Civil Other Gov't - Mil Universities International Commercial Figure 11 Monthly Users and Breakdown 8

9 USGS EDC EO-1 Image Sales $/Mo for Year 2002 $ 200, , ,000 50,000 - Figure 12 Monthly Sales Figure 11 and 12 show the results of all of these efforts thus far. The monthly trend in revenue is up. The monthly number of users is up. The total revenue as of August 2, 2002 is $677K with actual sales beginning January 31, We expect the trend to continue for a few more months and then level off. At that point, we expect that a good portion of operations can be reimbursed, however we do not expect that we will be able to reach the point where the mission is self sustaining if merely for the fact that we can not take sufficient number of cloud-free scenes per month to generate the required revenue. 6. Conclusion Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Month Series1 In conclusion, the partnership established between NASA and USGS served a few useful purposes. First of all, the science community was better served because of increase awareness of an opportunity to perform some new science. The model that we used in this partnership was the one used for Landsat between the two agencies. This second go round may set increasing precedent to set up more of these partnerships where feasible in the future and thus stretch the taxpayers dollar further. 9