Today, two members of D3TN presented the planned OPS-SAT experiment at ESA’s Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. The mission of OPS-SAT is to launch a Cube Sat which gives ‘Experimenters’ the opportunity to perform live testing in the domain of mission control systems. OPS-SAT will be an in-orbit test-bed for:

• On-board software applications
• Advanced communication protocols
• Compression techniques
• Demonstration of advanced software-defined radio concepts
• Optical communication from ground to space
• Experiments using cameras, attitude control, scheduling and autonomy

Experiments with ground-based applications can also be hosted. More information about the OPS-SAT mission can be found at https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/OPS-SAT.

D3TN plans on testing µPCN, an implementation of the DTN bundle protocol that enables communication in the space environment without continuous end-to-end paths. At the experimenter workshop, D3TN had the opportunity to interact with the OPS-SAT team and other experimenters. Furthermore, our team members visited the SMILE control facilities.