"COSMO-SkyMed Di seconda generazione" development status and prospects relevant to interoperability, expandability and multi mlssion/multi sensor capabilities

COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) is the most important Italian space programme. The system, fully deployed since 2010, is one of the most advanced in the field of Earth Observation by means of Synthetic Aperture Radar. COSMO-SkyMed di Seconda Generazione (CSG) has been conceived, according to the requirements stated by Italian Space Agency and Italian Ministry of Defence, at the twofold need of ensuring operational continuity to the currently operating "first generation" constellation, while achieving a generational step ahead in terms of functionality and performances. In order to ensure such continuity, the new CSG satellites will be ready for operations timely to replace the previous generation satellites whenever they are being progressively phased out at the end of their lifetime, starting from 2016 onward. In the current days, the CSG programme has just concluded the phase B, together to some anticipated phase C activities: this non-standard development approach was chosen in order to come with a very tight schedule. CSG user ground segment, in continuity with CSK architectural key principles, is based on an interoperable and multi-mission design enabling the exhibition of specific access services to external partners and, conversely, the access through CSG to services made available by other Earth Observation (EO) partners. The exploitation of these multi-mission EO services can be then achieved through the definition of a "service layer", based on Service Oriented Architecture, in charge to interconnect the different partners, customise the information exchange and implement additional functions in support to services not available at CSG level. Due to the CSG architectural features, this service layer may be implemented limiting the impacts towards the CSG system to the addition of specific plug-ins and maintaining the man-machine interfaces already identified at CSG level for operators access to the services (e.g. multi-mission request submission, multi-mission planning, multi-mission catalogue browsing).