CSC Provides Support for NASA Space Missions

Effective and reliable Flight Software (FSW) is critical to the success of every space mission. FSW is a unique application that controls a spacecraft, interfaces with every spacecraft subsystem and allows communications with the ground. CSC's Multi-Mission FSW (MMFSW) team has provided sustained engineering support for 15 orbiting spacecraft. These include the Hubble Space Telescope and weather and research satellites such as the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite. The CSC team takes a proactive approach to supporting the entire life of space missions, from pre-launch development to re-entry, and everything in between.

CSC's engineering work is wide ranging, involving vital tasks such as flight and simulator software maintenance, configuration management, mission trend analysis and documentation. NASA relies on the team's deep knowledge and experience in areas such as software design and architecture. These skills help improve the maintainability of spacecraft, thereby extending the life of missions and generating substantial cost savings for the agency.

The CSC MMFSW team also prides itself on being able to respond promptly to spacecraft emergencies. For example, in 2006, they helped NASA come up with a quick software fix to repair a camera on the Hubble that had stopped working.  The team has also helped NASA provide numerous public benefits. These include developing a software fix for a hardware problem on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite, which generated timely and accurate hurricane predictions in 2005, the year Hurricanes Katrina and Rita wreaked havoc on the U.S. Gulf Coast. The team also provides support to NASA satellites that gather invaluable scientific information about the earth's environment, atmospheric events and the origin of the universe.

The ability to develop innovative software solutions is essential because many of NASA's spacecraft were launched many years ago and have relatively old technology onboard.  In response to the challenging and multi-mission nature of the work, the CSC team has adopted an innovative management approach by blending vertical and horizontal business models. Each mission has multiple staff members, and each staff member works on multiple missions.  As part of the vertical model, team members are cross-trained across multiple missions, which saves NASA manpower costs. On the horizontal end of the equation, dedicated staff members oversee processes across all missions and team members' assignments are constantly reevaluated.

This approach allows highly specialized technical experts to move fluidly from one mission to the next, dealing promptly with specific issues or unexpected anomalies. The CSC MMFSW team also has a technical lead to identify similarities between each mission and a process engineer to streamline processes across missions. The objective is to gain knowledge and develop best processes that can be shared between missions.