Experience with the EURECA Packet Telemetry and Packet Telecommand system

The European Retrieval Carrier (EURECA) was launched on its first flight on the 31st of July 1992 and retrieved on the 29th of June 1993. EURECA is characterized by several new on-board features, most notably Packet telemetry, and a partial implementation of packet telecommanding, the first ESA packetised spacecraft. Today more than one year after the retrieval the data from the EURECA mission has to a large extent been analysed and we can present some of the interesting results. This paper concentrates on the implementation and operational experience with the EURECA Packet Telemetry and Packet Telecommanding. We already discovered during the design of the ground system that the use of packet telemetry has major impact on the overall design and that processing of packet telemetry may have significant effect on the computer loading and sizing. During the mission a number of problems were identified with the on-board implementation resulting in very strange anomalous behaviors. Many of these problems directly violated basic assumptions for the design of the ground segment adding to the strange behavior. The paper shows that the design of a telemetry packet system should be flexible enough to allow a rapid configuration of the telemetry processing in order to adapt it to the new situation in case of an on-board failure. The experience gained with the EURECA mission control should be used to improve ground systems for future missions.