Ground Segment

The Scientific Mission Centre (SMC) is part of the global management and processing system of the TARANIS mission. It must ensure the exploitation of the on-board instruments by the scientific community by providing it with the necessary resources to manage and control the experiments, to draw up workplans and measures, and to process and distribute information.

SMC key functions are:

• to prepare the in-flight experiment schedule, and to handle more generally the operational management of instruments and the scientific payload,
• to recover scientific and technological data in X band and housekeeping data in S band,
• to manage auxiliary data (ephemeris, attitude, S band and X band station visibility, orbital events),
• to process scientific data,
• to process auxiliary data (orbit determination and attitude computations),
• to process and display technological data,
• to organize short term archive,
• to make data and results available, first to laboratories involved in the experiments, then to the entire scientific community,
• user management,
• operation management.

The SMC is located at the LPC2E/CNES in Orléans. The LPC2E is the co-prime contractor of the SMC with CNES. The LPC2E provides coordination with all laboratories involved. Operational decisions related to the scientific payload will be taken by the SMC.