Technology miniaturization and system architecture advancements have created an opportunity to significantly lower the cost of many types of space missions by sharing capabilities between multiple spacecraft. Historically, most spacecraft have been atomic entities that (aside from their communications with and tasking by ground controllers) operate in isolation. Several notable example exist; however, these are purpose-designed systems that collaborate to perform a single goal. The above the cloud computing (ATCC) concept aims to create ad-hoc collaboration between service provider and consumer craft. Consumer craft can procure processing, data transmission, storage, imaging and other capabilities from provider craft. Because of onboard storage limitations, communications link capability limitations and limited windows of communication, data relevant to or required for various operations may span multiple craft. This paper presents a model for the identification, storage and accessing of this data. This model includes appropriate identification features for this highly distributed environment. It also deals with business model constraints such as data ownership, retention and the rights of the storing craft to access, resell, transmit or discard the data in its possession. The model ensures data integrity and confidentiality (to the extent applicable to a given data item), deals with unique constraints of the orbital environment and tags data with business model (contractual) obligation data.

Date Published: 22 May 2014
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 9124, Satellite Data Compression, Communications, and Processing X, 91240O (22 May 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2049498

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9124:
Satellite Data Compression, Communications, and Processing X
Bormin Huang; Chein-I Chang; José Fco. López, Editor(s)