Multimission Mission Planning Systems: Lessons Learnt
Gomez Cid, Celestino; Tejo Mora-Granados, Juan
GMV, SPAIN

The space industry has evolved in the past decades with the result that the main satellite operators are in charge of fleets of spacecraft manufactured by different companies with different characteristics. Additionally, many new scientific missions have come up with the quest to better knowledge of the Earth, with ever improving instruments and increased data recordings. The operation of multiple platform fleets or highly specialized missions have one thing in common: they require a tool that can plan and schedule while adapting to the ever changing requirements and constraints driven by the mission. flexplan is a COTS Mission Planning and Scheduling (MPS) product that has matured in the past years while integrated in such missions. Its primary goal of offering a flexible solution that can adapt with minor operational impact has been achieved and superseded by an increased focus on performance when multiple platforms and complex operations are present. This paper describes the lessons learnt to provide the adequate degree of support to the objectives to the missions that are supported by the flexplan system.