L03 - HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT OPERATIONS

★What are the two satellite systems used to relay ISS communication, and which agencies operate them?

TDRS, operated by NASA, and EDRS, operated by ESA

★Which ground stations receive the TDRS and EDRS signals respectively?

White Sands (NASA, feeds MCC-H Houston) and Harwell (ESA, feeds Col-CC)

★Name the four European ISS User Support and Operations Centres and their primary payload responsibilities.

BIOTESC in Luzern (Kubik, CIMON),

B-USOC in Brussels (FSL, ASIM),

CADMOS in Toulouse (EPM, PK4, ACES),

MUSC in Cologne (Biolab, MSL, EDR, EML)

★What is the role of COL-FLIGHT?

Responsible for operations and safety of the Columbus module, leads the Columbus flight control team, and is the interface to the ISS Flight Director in Houston

★What is the role of COMET?

Responsible for near real-time planning, commanding of the ESA Life Support Rack (LSR), and MPCC support

★What is the role of COSMO?

Responsible for onboard stowage and mechanical activities, and takes care of the Plug-in-Plan electrical connection

★What is the role of EUROCOM?

In charge of space-to-ground voice communication for Columbus

★What is the role of STRATOS?

Responsible for the data and video communication subsystem, commands and monitors DMS, ECLSS, TCS and power distribution, monitors all Columbus subsystems, and is the interface to 3 JSC flight controllers

★What is the role of GSOC GC?

Configures, maintains and operates the communication network and monitors ground infrastructure and subsystems, supported by Syscon

How does COL-FLIGHT's authority differ from STRATOS's?

COL-FLIGHT holds overall authority and responsibility for Columbus systems, payload safety, planning and anomaly resolution, and reports to the ISS Flight Director; STRATOS is a subsystem specialist commanding and monitoring specific onboard systems and reports within the team

Name three other agency ISS flight control centers besides Col-CC and their locations.

MCC-H at Houston (NASA), MCC-M at Moscow (Roskosmos), and the JAXA control center at Tsukuba

What is the role of the ISS Flight Director (ISS FD) at MCC-H?

Holds overall authority for the ISS as a whole; the Columbus Flight Director reports to this position for Columbus systems and payload matters

What does CAPCOM do at MCC-H?

Serves as the voice interface between mission control and the crew

In the Roskosmos control center structure, what does RP stand for and what is its role?

Lead Flight Director, the overall flight direction authority in the Russian control structure

★What three documents are handed over to the operations team before a payload becomes operational, and what does each answer?

• Stage Analysis (which interrelations exist),

• Hazard Reports (which hazards are known),

• Ops Handbooks (how does the experiment work);

together these feed into Operations Preparation

Why must onboard software and the ground Mission Data Base both be configured for a new experiment?

The onboard software must be configured to run the experiment, and the ground Mission Data Base must match that configuration so telemetry displays can correctly decode and show the data

What is required before an experiment can be commanded from the ground?

Command files have to be developed and tested

What is a Flight Rule, and give the cooling-loop example from the lecture.

A binding operational constraint agreed for safe operations; example: the experiment must be cooled continuously, and a cooling outage of more than 2 hours damages it

Why must materials used in a payload be classified in a Hazmat table?

To identify toxic or hazardous materials, determine whether an ops hazard control is required, and flag any related commands as hazardous commands

What can trigger a stationwide Caution & Warning alarm, and what must be predefined for it?

A payload malfunction, such as a cooling failure; both the alarm definition and the predefined response actions must be documented in advance, e.g. in the CCS Caution Table

Why can a European experiment require operational coordination through NASA even though it is a Columbus payload?

Because shared station resources like video downlink bandwidth are scheduled by MCC-H, requiring cross-agency coordination such as LSOS voice loop transitions

What is the purpose of the onboard Inventory Management System (IMS) database?

It tracks the stowage location of every item on the ISS, since stowage locations and cable/plug-in routing are all predefined and tracked

What is the Increment Requirements Document (IRD) and what does it define for a payload?

The document that formally includes a payload in a given increment; it drives Maintenance Plan inclusion, Ops Concept definition, crew training, photo/video requirements, hardware manifesting, CoFR, and relative priority

What does CoFR stand for and what is its purpose?

Certification of Flight Readiness, confirming a payload or hardware is certified ready to fly

★List the four levels of the ISS planning process cascade with their approximate planning horizons.

On-Orbit Summary (about 6 months out),

Monthly Lookahead Plan (about 6 weeks out),

Weekly Lookahead Plan / WLP (about 2 weeks out, covers 1 week),

Short-Term Plan / STP (6 days out, covers 1 day)

Which ISS planning tool is used to visualize the final Short-Term Plan?

The Optimis Viewer

★Give two examples of routine Columbus maintenance tasks.

• Cleaning of dust filters,

• Degassing of the cooling loop and taking water samples,

• Applying fungicide to the cooling loop

• Exchanging LED bulbs (any two)

★Give two examples of Columbus hardware maintenance or upgrade tasks.

• Exchange of defective hardware such as CMU, WOOV or CWSA with partial transfer back to Earth,

• Replacement of tape recorders by Solid State Disks, and

• Onboard software upgrades

What happened during the Expedition 42 ammonia leak event on 14 January 2015?

A false alarm about a possible ammonia leak triggered an emergency; the crew was evacuated to the Russian segment of the ISS, and after confirming it was a false alarm, returned to the US segment

★Name the crewed spacecraft currently used to transport crew to the ISS.

Soyuz, Crew Dragon, and CST-100 Starliner (first crewed flight 5 June 2024)

Name the uncrewed cargo spacecraft used to resupply the ISS.

Progress, Cygnus, Dragon cargo variant, and HTV

★What does XVV stand for and describe the ISS standard attitude.

X-axis in Velocity Vector; the ISS flies with its X-axis aligned with the flight direction (velocity vector), Y perpendicular to it, and Z pointing toward nadir, i.e. down toward Earth

Why does ISS altitude decrease over time without intervention, and what compensates for it?

Atmospheric drag continuously lowers the orbit; periodic reboosts, using Progress, ATV, or the Service Module, raise the altitude back up

★What is the relationship between solar activity (sunspot number) and ISS altitude decay?

Higher solar activity heats and expands the upper atmosphere, increasing drag and altitude decay; lower solar activity means less drag, so the station decays more slowly

What is a Debris Avoidance Maneuver (DAM)?

An orbital maneuver performed to move the ISS out of the path of a tracked piece of space debris when a collision risk is identified

When a DAM cannot be performed in time, what is the fallback procedure?

The crew shelters in place, for example in the docked spacecraft, ready for rapid evacuation if debris strikes

What was the purpose of the Columbus Debris Scan?

To use the robotic arm with a camera to systematically scan the Columbus exterior surface, comparing actual micro-debris impact damage against the predicted debris flux model from MASTER 2009

★When was Columbus launched and on which mission?

Launched on STS-122/1E on 7 February 2008, after a scrubbed first attempt on 6 December 2007

Roughly how long has Columbus been in orbit and what milestone did it recently pass?

About 6665 days in orbit, reaching its 100,000th orbit on 12 September 2025

★How many internal payload racks does Columbus have, and how are they split between ESA and NASA?

9 total: 5 ESA racks (Biolab, FSL, EPM, EDR, EDR-2) and 4 NASA racks (HRF 1 and 2, Express Rack 3 and 9b)

Name Columbus's external payloads mentioned in the lecture.

ASIM, ACES, STP-H7, and STP-H10

What is the Bartolomeo platform used for?

An external platform on Columbus that hosts additional external payloads, for example the Langmuir Probe

Why is daily physical exercise mandatory for ISS crew?

To counteract muscle atrophy and bone density loss caused by microgravity

★What is the current status of the Gateway program as presented in the lecture?

Gateway is paused; its integrated spacecraft configuration, including PPE, HALO, I-Hab, ESPRIT-Refueler, Airlock and Canadarm3/GERS, was shown crossed out as paused

★List the Artemis Phase 1 missions with their status and dates.

Artemis I, uncrewed, launched 16 November 2022; Artemis II, crewed lunar flyby, launched 1 April 2026; Artemis III, crewed, Earth orbit rendezvous, planned 2027

What supports every Orion flight, and who provides it?

The European Service Module (ESM), provided by ESA/Europe

Who were the crew members of Artemis II?

Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch (all NASA), and Jeremy Hansen (CSA)

Name the two lunar lander concepts proposed for Artemis IV and V.

SpaceX Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon

What is ESA's Argonaut, and when is its planned launch?

A European robotic lunar lander concept consisting of a Lunar Descent Element, Cargo Platform Element and Payload; planned launch in 2030

★Why is a long-term stay at the lunar south pole operationally challenging?

Limited and intermittent direct-Earth communication availability compared to other landing sites, plus extremely rugged crater topology comparable to Himalayan terrain, complicating landing and surface operations

What is the LUNA Facility and what is it used for?

A DLR/ESA analog facility in Cologne used for training, validation and test scenarios to prepare astronauts and hardware for future lunar surface activities