The EUROPA Ground Segment

For more than 10 years ASI has carried out extensive research and development work in the area of space robotics. The dexterous manipulation of payloads has been studied in depth and key subsystems have been developed. In the framework of an ASI/NASA agreement for the Space Station utilization ASI defined the mission EUROPA (External Use of RObotics for Payloads Automation) to be flown on the ISS utilization flight UF3. For the implementation of the mission ASI is finalizing an agreement with ESA which foresees ESA contribution for a scientific P/L, the Robot Calibration Platform, the Remote Monitoring and Control and Preparation and Verification (RMC/PV) and the Facility Monitoring and Command (FMC) SW packages for ground station. The purpose of the mission is to install the SPIDER robotic arm on an Express Pallet Adapter (EPA) and to carry out servicing operations of scientific payloads. A Ground Control Station will allow the end users to interact with the experiments without the need for astronaut time. The EUROPA Ground Control station will be installed in the new ASI Center for Space Robotics (CRS) based in Matera (Italy). The Center shall feature for EUROPA program and for other future programs: • clean room and integration laboratories • facilities for test of robotic systems • facilities for congress and workshop • advanced Man-Machine Interface for end-to-end operations. The present paper is mostly focused on: • the Ground Reference Model (GRM) of the Flight Segment • the Ground Support Equipment (GSE), including in particular the Ground Control Station which will be based on the RMC/PV and the FMC SW packages provided by ESA • the Center for Space Robotics • the advanced Man-Machine Interface