Features of the Deployed NPP-JPSS-DWSS Common Ground System

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are jointly acquiring the next-generation civilian weather and environmental satellite system: the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). JPSS will contribute the afternoon orbit component and ground processing system of the restructured National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). As such, JPSS will replace the current Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) managed by NOAA and the ground processing component of both POES and the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) replacement known as the Defense Weather Satellite System (DWSS), managed by the Department of Defense (DoD). The JPSS satellites will carry a suite of sensors designed to collect meteorological, oceanographic, climatological, and solar-geophysical observations of the earth, atmosphere, and space. The ground processing system for JPSS is known as the JPSS Common Ground System (JPSS CGS), and consists of a Command, Control, and Communications Segment (C3S) and the Interface Data Processing Segment (IDPS). Both are developed by Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems (IIS). The IDPS will process JPSS satellite data to provide environmental data products (aka, Environmental Data Records or EDRs) to NOAA and DoD processing centers operated by the United States government. The IDPS will process EDRs beginning with the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) and continue through the lifetime of the JPSS and DWSS systems. C3S is responsible for managing the overall JPSS and DWSS missions from control and status of the space and ground assets to ensuring delivery of timely, high quality data from the Space Segments (SS) to IDPS for processing. In addition, the C3S provides the globally-distributed ground assets necessary to collect and transport mission, telemetry, and command data between the satellites and the processing locations. C3S will provide all functions required for day-to-day commanding and state-of-health monitoring of the NPP, JPSS and DWSS satellites, and delivery of Stored Mission Data (SMD) to each Central IDP for data products generation and transfer to System subscribers. C3S will also monitors and reports system-wide health and status and data communications with external systems and between the JPSS CGS segments.

The JPSS CGS C3S and IDPS segments have been delivered and transitioned to operations for NPP. C3S was transitioned to operations at the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility (NSOF) in Suitland, Maryland in August 2007 and IDPS was transitioned to operations in July 2009. Both segments have been involved with several compatibility tests with the NPP Satellite at the Ball Aerospace Technology Corporation (BATC) factory. The compatibility tests have involved the spacecraft bus and the four sensors, VIIRS, ATMS, CrIS and OMPS. The tests have involved both the ground segments flowing data between the NSOF and the BATC factory and flowing data from the polar ground station located at Svalbard over high-speed links back to the NSOF and the two centrals located at NESDIS and AFWA. This presentation will describe the JPSS CGS ground architecture features and enhancements for the JPSS (post-NPP) timeframe. These features and enhancements include C3S-provided space to ground connectivity, reliable and secure data delivery and insight and oversight of the total operations. For post-NPP, the ground segment architecture is extended to provide additional ground receptor sites to reduce data product delivery times to users. This ground segment architecture is extended to provide delivery of additional sensor data products from sensors similar to NPP and additional JPSS sensors. This architecture is also extended from two Centrals (NESDIS and AFWA) to two additional Centrals (FNMOC and NAVO). While the ground segment architecture is extended and enhanced for JPSS, IDPS acts as a buffer minimizing changes in how users request and receive data products.