Roadmap to instrument Operation readiness. Lessons learned from the RLS Instrument on board the ExoMars Rover

Roadmap to instrument Operation readiness. Lessons learned from the RLS Instrument on board the ExoMars Rover

L. Seoane¹, A. Moral¹, C. Pérez¹, J. Zafra¹, S. Ibarmia¹, G. López-Reyes², D. Gutiérrez³, M. García-Alonso⁴, E. Sentana⁵, F. Rull², O. Prieto-Ballesteros⁶

(1) Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA). Torrejón de Ardoz (Spain). seoanepl@inta.es

(2) Universidad de Valladolid. Valladolid (Spain)

(3) Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. Madrid (Spain)

(4) Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Madrid (Spain)

(5) Universidad Carlos III. Madrid (Spain)

(6) Centro de Astrobiología (CSIC-INTA)

The Raman Laser Spectrometer (RLS) [1], as one of the three scientific instruments inside the Pasteur analytical suite on board the Rover module of the ExoMars mission, must be operated in fully coordination with the Rover Operations Control Center (ROCC) by the RLS Operations team [2].

So, the preparation for instrument operations is twofold; on one side, at high level, the ROCC provides organization, tools, infrastructure, training, etc. to all personnel involved in ROCC operations, including science instrument teams. On the other side, and always being compliant with agreements and dispositions made by ROCC, each science instrument team must also prepare its own organization, specific tools, infrastructure outside ROCC, internal training, etc. at instrument level.

While at high level all the process is guided by the ROCC, for the preparation at instrument level, each instrument team must be in charge to do it. This contribution tries to show the path to be followed for the latter, the operations preparation at instrument level, taking the experience obtained by RLS as reference.

Establishing a specific working group may be a good starting point. As main activities, this group would be in charge of, besides ROCC interface management, instrument operation definition - including definition of reference activity plans, instrument measurement scenarios, staffing, roles and logistics, day-to-day operations, tools, data flow and support laboratory data, among others - and operation readiness plan development – defining a set of specific activities grouped by milestones, establishing how and when they should be finished.

Based on RLS experience, we cannot consider instrument operation definition as straightforward. It comprises many different activities which requires quite personnel involved, taking decisions at different levels. Furthermore, the list of activities is not easy to be fully identified at the beginning. So, for all this, RLS makes the operation readiness plan as a key element to control the progress despite these difficulties.

The plan was established choosing temporal horizons relevant for the mission, and from there, defining which capacities of software, installations and personnel should be ready to be able to operate the instrument properly at the end of each horizon, point at which a simulation is scheduled.

Simulations are the means to verify expected activities were carried out and work fine during a quasi-real scenario and to find out new needs not originally covered. So, feedback got during simulations is really helpful to improve the operation definition in different aspects, from equipment and infrastructure, to tasks assigned by roles, coordination between team members, tools improvements, etc. It is for this that both, the simulation preparation and its review are considered very relevant activities and must be carefully prepared.  

Activities assigned to each temporal horizon or phase are, at least at the beginning, quite addressed by the development of software tools. These tools support tasks assigned to personnel, they are quite often complex and their development very time-consuming. So, in order to have a good progress in the operation readiness, review points of software developments should be included in simulations.

Thus, to define activities for the different phases, efforts in determining data flow and needed software applications should be made from the beginning. In the case of RLS, the following software tools have been considered:

For instrument data processing:

• RENATO: Raman ENgineering Assesment Tool, for automatic check of instrument health and verification of the last commanded activities execution, anomalies identification, etc.
• IDAT/SpectPro: Instrument Data Analysis Tool for processing Raman spectra, including automatic generation of elaborated products and reports.
• RASTA [3]: RLS Archive and Supporting Tools for Analysis of data generated during any test on any model of RLS whose data had been previously inserted in the database (RASTA-DB) by executing a script available with this tool (RASTA-PARSER).

For APs (Activity Plans) generation:

• RLS_AP_Generator: Tool for APs creation, including validation of parameters, and estimation of data generated when the AP is executed and duration of this execution.

For supporting instrument operation:

• RLS Operation Portal: Web application developed through a wiki-based approach that allows accessing to downlinked/uplinked data, reports generated, operator shifts, and all the information that can be considered useful for the RLS team during operations.

Apart from data flow and software tools, development and setting of installations can be included in the operation readiness plan. For RLS, besides the Rover Operations Control Centre (ROCC) that is located at ALTEC, in Torino, a specific instrument Control Centre was proposed. This is the RLS Operations Control Centre (RLS-OCC) placed at INTA and connected to the ROCC by VPN, allowing remote operation of the instrument. In this case, the RLS-OCC was included in the instrument operation readiness plan, having its development scheduled into the plan.

In conclusion, establishing a plan focused in simulations results in an extremely practical resource to manage instrument operation readiness; besides supporting training of the team involved, it helps to improve roles definition and, also, to guide evolution and next steps to follow in software development, logistics support, equipment, etc. It becomes the main tool to control the progress of every development and, at the same time, helps to identify new needs and improve functionality and coordination.

 

References

[1] F. Rull et al., “The Raman Laser Spectrometer for the ExoMars Rover Mission to Mars”, Astrobiology, Vol. 17, Num. 6 and 7, 2017.

[2] L. Seoane et al., “Operation design based on short-term response for the RLS instrument, on board the ExoMars 2022 Rover”, SpaceOps 2021.

[3] J. Zafra et al., “RASTA (RLS Archive and Supporting Tools for Analysis), a supporting tool to manage planetary mission archives.” EPSC 2020.