Design of mission operations systems for scientific remote sensing

The present work describes the mission operations system (MOS) design process for remote-sensing missions. A MOS is defined as the system required to perform, monitor, and control an operation, encompassing personnel, hardware, software and/or documentation. Attention is given to telecommunications and remote-sensing instrumentation, MOS definition program phases and reviews, and MOS organization, management, and staffing. Also treated are the uplink and downlink processes, anomalies and contingency plans, the illustrative case of the MOS for the Magellan radar sensing mission, and a projection of future MOSs incorporating AI.