“A tous de DDO : Attention pour le décompte final, … 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, TOP”: these words said by Fleur Lefevre, a Launch Range Manager (DDO in French) at Guiana Space Centre (CSG), culminated three years of work on the brand new Jupiter II Control Centre. For each Ariane, Soyouz or Vega launcher, the Control Centre is activated in order to coordinate the final chronology. The status of all range systems, launcher, customer’s spacecraft, safety, security and weather forecast has to be “green” in order to enter the final sequence. Behind the scenes, an IT system called CDC gathers the state of each system necessary for the launch and, by using complex logical equations, allows the final countdown. After 20 years of use and more than 170 launches, it needed to be completely rebuilt, as both software and hardware were starting to become obsolete. One of the biggest challenges for the new CSG Jupiter 2 Control Centre was to introduce new technologies, like touchscreens or smartphones, and also new design principles to the operators, while coping with all the constraints imposed by a real time system for a launch range. Final tests before VA240 Launch The introduction of new technologies had a double objective: The CDC system is CSG’s “showcase” and as such, it is a duty and an opportunity to display the integration of new technologies at CSG to the Space community and also to the general public. Furthermore, the introduction of new technologies opens a wide window to new services and operations optimisations. With that objective in mind, the emphasis was placed on ensuring a great quality user experience, via a high level of interaction with end users and ergonomics studies. The target system will take advantage of the tablet experience, without forgetting the criticality of the system. Moreover, the introduction of smartphones can be considered a first for a ground-based space facility, taking into account all the security issues that the introduction of such a technology into a highly-secured environment implies. For the first time, we focused primarily on the ergonomics, using more than 70% of the design time to improve the User eXperience (UX) and the User Interface (UI). Assembly of the new Control Centre CDC BECOMES MOBILE But it was not enough. We believed we could go further: We wanted to give mobility to the control room operators. We wanted to take the CDC out of the Jupiter 2 building. We wanted the CDC to be available 24/7, everywhere. So we thought that a smartphone application could be the way. Given the new interface was already designed for touchscreens, porting the most frequently used applications to a smartphone was easy, and allowed us to grant the operators a 100% system visibility at all times. This is a big step forward in the Jupiter 2 control room, as it becomes now possible to perform other activities and still be informed about the status of the different systems through the information gathered by the smartphone. After 36 months of Project development, GTD delivered the system, which became operational during the VA240 launch performed on Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at exactly 18:36:07, Universal Time (UTC). GTD participated in support to the launch. Everything worked nominally which is the best expected outcome. Written by Joan Garrido, Ernest Cañamares y Diego Amores
