Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Common Ground System (CGS) Overview

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 replaces the current Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) managed by NOAA and the ground processing component of both Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites and the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) replacement, previously 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 an Interface Data Processing Segment (IDPS). Both segments are developed by Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems (IIS). The C3S currently flies the Suomi National Polar Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite and transfers mission data from Suomi NPP and between the ground facilities. The IDPS processes Suomi NPP satellite data to provide Environmental Data Records (EDRs) to NOAA and DoD processing centers operated by the United States government. When the JPSS-1 satellite is launched in early 2017, the responsibilities of the C3S and the IDPS will be expanded to support both Suomi NPP and JPSS-1.

The JPSS CGS currently provides data processing for Suomi NPP, generating multiple terabytes per day across over two dozen environmental data products; that workload will be multiplied by two when the JPSS-1 satellite is launched. The CGS also provides raw data processing for GCOM-W1 to support further processing by NOAA. The CGS provides data routing for numerous missions, including Coriolis/Windsat, NASA SCaN (including EOS), DMSP, POES and Metop. Each of these satellites orbits the Earth 14 times a day, downlinking mission data once or twice per orbit at up to hundreds of megabits per second, to support the generation of tens of terabytes per day across hundreds of environmental data products.

This presentation will provide an overview of the JPSS CGS ground architecture features, ConOps, key specifications, developmental and operational facilities, present and future supported missions, and recent enhancements for support of the Suomi NPP mission. Key features include redundant mission management, a global commercial communications network for data routing and delivery, high-availability and low-latency data processing, a DoD 8500 compliant security posture, and a modular and extensible architecture. Key recent enhancements include a technology refresh of IDPS hardware to improve supportability and latency performance, incorporation of data routing and processing for the Global Change Observation Mission (GCOM), and significant software upgrades to improve overall system robustness and operability. These enhancements lay the foundation for the future evolution of the CGS to support additional missions.