Navarro Vicente

Abstract Reference: 30515
Identifier: P2.12
Presentation: Poster presentation
Key Theme: 2 Management of Scientific and Data Analysis Projects 

Towards a Common Software Engineering Environment for Science Operations

Authors:
Navarro Vicente, Hanson Kaarel, Lumi Kaarel, Gill Ranpal, Marcos Jose, Segovia Juan-Carlos, Javier Arenas

The European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) has been ESA’s Science Operations Centre (SOC) since 2008. For each science mission ESAC hosts a number of operational systems typically related to mission planning, instrument handling, data processing, services and tools to users, and data archiving. As part of this role, ESAC is responsible for the management and implementation of Science Operations Systems throughout the software development lifecycle. Therefore high quality software engineering flow-down from Mission Requirements to Science Operations represents a critical success factor for ESAC in particular, and any space project in general. Although standards and principles for 'good' software engineering have been established for quite some time, over recent years more and better support tools have become available. These tools represent key enablers for increased efficiency, contributing to deliver higher quality software systems with less effort and time. The main goal of this activity is to define a common software engineering environment where a core set of tools and procedures are shared across teams. This environment is to be used for all upcoming missions while current missions, with software engineering environments often characterised by a heterogeneous approach, will migrate depending on their specific circumstances. In order to maximize productivity the project has followed an evolutive / Agile approach, focusing on those areas with higher potential for commonality:
• Project Management
• Problem and Change Management
• Source / Documentation Version Control
• Release management
Other areas like requirements engineering or test management, were tackled as part of the project needs in a generic way, defining a potential solution for other projects. Moreover the design of the new environment has been done in cooperation with a multi-disciplinary team from different missions, leveraging on existing practices and tools already in place. This paper presents the approach, architecture design and implementation of the future Science Operations Configuration Control Infrastructure at ESAC.