Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Common Ground System (CGS) Use of Space Link Extension Protocol

The U.S.'s NOAA and NASA are acquiring the next-generation weather satellite: the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). JPSS sensors will collect meteorological, oceanographic & climatological Earth observations. The JPSS ground system, aka, the Common Ground System (CGS), consists of Command, Control, & Communications (C3S) and Interface Data Processing (IDPS) segments. The CGS now flies the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) satellite, routing mission data from S-NPP and between ground facilities. CGS tasks will grow for S-NPP and JPSS-1 after the JPSS-1 launch. The CGS multimission capabilities also provide raw data acquisition, routing and processing for GCOM-W1 to aid further NOAA processing. It provides data routing for other missions, systems and organizations, including US Navy’s Coriolis/Windsat, NASA’s SCaN network (including EOS), NSF’s McMurdo Station communications, DoD’s DMSP, NOAA’s POES and EUMETSAT’s MetOp satellites. Each of these satellites orbit the Earth 14 times/day, downlinking data once or twice/orbit at up to 100s of megabits/second, to support the generation of 10s of terabytes of data/day across 100s of environmental products. The Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) Space Link Extension (SLE) Services use provides a standardized, reliable means to move mission command & telemetry data between the five CGS-supported ground stations and the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility (NSOF). Using this protocol promotes CGS expandability by providing added risk reduction and cost savings when integrating future missions and ground service providers into the CGS. It provides a well-documented standard data transfer protocol supported as commercial off the shelf (COTS) by many satellite communications vendors. It eliminates the need to develop and support new and complex mission-specific data transfer mechanisms and interfaces and results in risk reduction with the deployment and integration of such mission-specific data transfer mechanisms for new missions and ground station providers. The CGS is expandable to support added ground station service providers with or without the deployment of added JPSS ground hardware by using standard SLE Transfer Service protocol.  The Raytheon-built JPSS CGS provides a full common ground capability, from design and development through operations and sustainment. These features lay the foundation for the CGS future evolution to support additional missions and the NOAA/NESDIS Enterprise Ground System vision.