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General Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Gene DiGennaro on 09/29/2009 07:22 pm

Title: COTS-D question
Post by: Gene DiGennaro on 09/29/2009 07:22 pm
All this talk of privately owned and operated manned orbital spacecraft has me thinking. How will these spacecraft communicate? Will there be "mission control" centers for these vehicles?  Will they be able to use the TDRS network once in orbit?

Inquiring minds want to know...
Title: Re: COTS-D question
Post by: Jim on 09/29/2009 07:29 pm
All this talk of privately owned and operated manned orbital spacecraft has me thinking. How will these spacecraft communicate? Will there be "mission control" centers for these vehicles?  Will they be able to use the TDRS network once in orbit?

Inquiring minds want to know...

they will have their own  mission control centers, just like the hundreds of spacecraft up there now.

They can rent TDRSS time, they can use other comsats, there are many ground stations that they can use.
Title: Re: COTS-D question
Post by: Danderman on 09/29/2009 07:37 pm
All this talk of privately owned and operated manned orbital spacecraft has me thinking. How will these spacecraft communicate? Will there be "mission control" centers for these vehicles?  Will they be able to use the TDRS network once in orbit?

Inquiring minds want to know...

Commercial vehicles that will visit ISS have a requirement to have a control capability, presumably their own little mini-Houston, but their control facility must interface with Houston so that Houston has command authority over the visiting vehicle for ISS prox ops.

Its conceivable that a commercial visiting vehicle control facility may simply be a console at Houston, at least for prox ops.


Title: Re: COTS-D question
Post by: Jim on 09/29/2009 07:40 pm
Its conceivable that a commercial visiting vehicle control facility may simply be a console at Houston, at least for prox ops.


No, that doesn't do any good for the rest of the flight.  The rest of the mission needs a control center for before and after prox ops.

The console at JSC would just be a rep from the visiting vehicle who would be in touch with the visiting vehicle control facility.
Title: Re: COTS-D question
Post by: Danny Dot on 09/29/2009 08:35 pm
Does anyone know if a sat-phone works in LEO?  There might be a problem with Doppler shift or having the sat-phone network track the location of the moving spaceship.

Danny Deger
Title: Re: COTS-D question
Post by: bobthemonkey on 09/29/2009 08:47 pm
I can't find the original source, but I do recall a nanosat that aimed to demo using commercial comsats as an alternative for TDRSS.