Overview
The Telescience Support Center provides services that allow Payload Scientists to perform and monitor ISS experiments locally or over the Internet from remote locations for the ISS Medical Project. The JSC TSC serves as a user ground facility for payloads operated aboard the ISS micro-gravity environment. The TSC provides display and control capabilities for the responsible Payload Developers, Project Teams and Principal Investigators for Mission & Science operations from their home institute. These capabilities include the processing and display of an experiment’s or payload’s electronic data, video display of downlinked spacecraft activities, a voice intercommunication system, and ground commanding of ISS onboard payloads. The TSC facility provides data archiving, processing, and computating in real-time during pre-flight, in-flight, and post-flight operations from Baseline Data Collection Facilities (BDCF) located at JSC, Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Dryden Flight Research Facility (DFRC), as well as data recorded onboard for playback during post-mission operations. Data can be transferred between the TSC and remote user’s facilities as required.
JSC TSC Facilities
The TSC is physically located in the NASA/JSC Mission Control Center – Houston (MCC-H). The physical facility is also known as The Science Center, which is an easily configurable environment equipped to support multiple payload activities simultaneously. Systems and payload data, local network services, phones, printing services, JSC Institutional Network Service (INS) access, timing, video, command, and power are provided to allow maximum access to the science and engineering community.
JSC TSC Room Configuration
The TSC has a large video screen on the front wall and four 42-inch wall mounted flat panel displays that are positioned throughout the room. Video feeds to these displays include ISS/STS downlink, privatized video, NASA Select, and RGB output from select TSC workstations. Two digital time display, which are located adjacent to the main video screen, display Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), Mission Elapsed Time (MET), and other times as needed.
The TSC has eight MCC-H type consoles for payload support. Each console area may consist of a Microsystems Integrated Real-time Acquisition Ground Equipment (MIRAGE) workstation, MCC-H dual monitor workstation, Electronic Flight Note (EFN) PC, two DVIS keysets with two headset connections each and two TSC payload support workstations. The TSC also provides additional workspace and workstations for overflow support.
Data Acquisition Facilities
A TSC data system is equipped to provide short-term storage of recently transmitted ISS/STS telemetry data. Short-term storage is defined as data capture plus 60 days. The capability to transfer data from this storage system to the Life Science Data Archive (LSDA) is provided. Data privacy is maintained in the short-term storage system as well as in the display capability. The processing of telemetry data can be done locally at the user workstation or the data can be retrieved via Virtual Private Networking (VPN) technology and analyzed at remote PI locations.
The MCC-H platform services include the workstations, network, and infrastructure software that allow the user community access to the vehicle systems data. The majority of the TSC consoles are configured with one workstation dedicated to viewing payload data and one workstation viewing vehicle systems data. The network and workstations that provide the MCC-H platform services are completely isolated from the payload data platform. The two-platform configuration ensures that each environment does not impact the other and that security is not an issue.
