SEASAT-A: An Experiment in End-to-End Information System Design

• Main Author: MacMedan, Mervyn L.
• Other Authors: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Language: en_US
• Published: International Foundation for Telemetering 1978
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/609964; http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/609964

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / November 14-16, 1978 / Hyatt House Hotel, Los Angeles, California === The SEASAT-A ocean dynamics monitoring satellite was designed with a keen awareness of the problems of handling huge volumes of data from an Earth-orbiting applications mission. An "End-to-End" approach to the entire information system was adopted very early in the life of the Project. Some innovations introduced include the provision of a "Packet Telemetry" system which is very similar to the NEEDS program objectives, and the incorporation of an adjustable satellite clock which directly time-tags the sensor data in GMT. This paper will review the mission and information system performance, and will summarize lessons learned from the experiment in system design.