Space program developers need to make greater use of commercially available communications and other technology as they work to make the space marketplace more available to end users, according to an executive involved in a successful recent experiment in using the Internet Protocol to control an orbiting satellite.

“As we look at satellite and other space programs, we spend a lot of money on nonrecurring engineering expenses in building the communications from the ground up for each mission,” said Rick Sanford, director of global space initiatives for the Cisco Global Space, Defense and Security Group. “If we can work in partnership with the aerospace community to drive adoption of commercial technology appropriately, we ought to be able to reduce costs, both for acquisition and life-cycle mission costs.”

Sanford has been involved with CLEO, also known as the Cisco router in Low Earth Orbit experiment. Two years ago, Cisco launched a COTS router onboard a U.K.-based disaster-monitoring satellite. While the satellite's primary purpose is providing images of the Earth's environment, the router is part of a secondary experiment that involves a wide range of groups, including SSTL, NASA, the Air Force, Army and General Dynamics.

The router tests form part of a " Virtual Mission Operations Center" (VMOC), an initiative of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Rapid Acquisition Net Centricity, executed as a collaborative experiment between the Air Force, the Army and NASA's Glenn Research Center.

Using only a regular laptop with Internet access, authorized users could acquire satellite telemetry, request images from SSTL's satellite dynamically, and perform real-time access to on-orbit satellite equipment. No ground station or special equipment required. As part of the experiment, the VMOC camp, at Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA, specified areas of the Earth and requested photographs, which were taken by the satellite and delivered from SSTL using standard IP. The software relied on mobile routing to communicate across the Internet via NASA Glenn to SSTL's ground station and up to the Cisco router onboard the satellite.