Introduction to NCTRS.

The Network Controller and Telemetry Router System (NCTRS) is the general purpose OCC front-end to the ground station (GS) network. It is part of the MCS infrastructure.

The main engineering principle is that the interface to the ground stations is handled in a separate sub-system, i.e. the control system contains:

• the mission control kernel (e.g. SCOS-2000 based)
• the ground station interface system

The role of the NCTRS is to:

• Establish the communication links between the OCC and the ground stations, i.e. open or close links (operator driven)
• Enable data transfers
  • TM
  • TC
  • Tracking data from the GS
  • GS files (orbit predictions and schedules)
• Monitor the status on the communication links.

It presents a simple interface to the OCC, hiding complexity of the protocols of GS equipment. The user interface is independent from MCS kernel user interface. It runs on Sun / Solaris workstations.

The basic concept is depicted in the following figure :

The NCTRS runs on a Sun Solaris workstation, connected to the GS network and to the OPSLAN.

The NCTRS can be used as well in third-party missions support. In such a case, the external MCS is connected to the IP network via a firewall.