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Ten Years on the Ground
In the mid-1990s, a small group of ground system architects and researchers at Aerospace envisioned a series of annual workshops to help ground system planners transition to common consensus-based open system architectures. To realize this vision, Aerospace began working with the University of Southern California's Center for Software Engineering (USC-CSE), which was pursuing a project on complex software design cosponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory.
The workshop became a reality in February, 1997, when Aerospace and the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) cosponsored the first Ground System Architectures Workshop (GSAW) in an auditorium at Aerospace. More than 200 participants met for two days of plenary presentations, panel discussions, and a keynote address by the SMC commander. That first GSAW focused on the role of software architectures in spacecraft ground system standardization, implementation (using commercial products, middleware, and frameworks), and interoperability.
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GSAW's primary mission has been to provide a forum for a diverse constituency of researchers and practitioners in the ground systems domain to exchange ideas and experiences. Participants include software researchers, acquisition managers, and technology providers from diverse commercial, academic, and government organizations. Most panels are moderated by ground systems experts from Aerospace.
A look at the conference syllabus provides insight into the most pressing concerns facing the ground systems sector. For example, the first conference in 1997 had numerous presentations on specialized architectures for operations and control, while the 2004 conference was dominated by information assurance and the Global Information Grid. The theme of the 2005 conference was "Collaboration and Common Solutions." A panel on mission support featured Aerospace presentations on international best practices in ground system automation. In a panel on emerging trends, Aerospace researchers discussed current and emerging ground system technologies in general as well as a scalable open-source digital video system for launch range operations. Additional panels covered topics such as standards and interoperability and new technologies and tools. At the 2004 conference, a panel on life-cycle strategies featured an Aerospace presentation on the use of combined system and software reliability models for satellite ground systems dependability predictions.
Each conference also includes a number of working group or "breakout" sessions. These half-day seminars provide a forum for focused discussion and analysis of critical core concepts introduced in the plenary presentations. Topics in 2005 included components, frameworks, and Web/Grid services for ground systems as well as lessons learned and future trends in collaboration. At a working group focused on managing acquisitions involving multiple organizations, Aerospace researchers led exercises geared toward applying system dynamics modeling to SMC acquisitions and gauging the cost of organizational structures and interfaces. Another working group, convened to study architecture-centered evolution, evaluation, and elaboration of software-intensive systems, included an Aerospace presentation on an aspect-oriented strategy for evaluating software architectures as they evolve.
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Breakout sessions the previous year covered topics such as tools and techniques for building enterprise and system architectures, Grid and Web service standards for government and defense systems, and ground system costs. A session on risk management featured an Aerospace presentation on best practices for the acquisition of COTS-based software systems.
GSAW's reach has been international from the beginning, attracting attendees and presenters from around the world. At GSAW2005, for example, representatives from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency described the development of generic ground systems by means of a standard modeling method. The European Space Operations Center presented on mission families as a cost-effective approach to control system development. Researchers from University of Bath discussed weather forecasting and fade mitigation.
GSAW has grown steadily over the last decade. By 2003, GSAW had outgrown the Aerospace auditorium and moved to the Marriott hotel in nearby Manhattan Beach. GSAW2004 saw the introduction of a full day of tutorial sessions, where domain experts were given the opportunity to share their knowledge and experiences in depth. Aerospace-led tutorials in 2004 included information assurance for ground systems and the Global Information Grid and system requirements development. This highly successful element of GSAW has been continued in the following years. Full- and half-day tutorials in 2005 included a structured approach to requirements and modeling, stakeholder collaboration and ground system software success, information assurance for DOD ground systems, and evolutionary acquisition and spiral development. Nine tutorials will be offered in 2006, ranging from software acquisition best practices to information assurance engineering for space systems.
GSAW affiliates include SMC, U.S. Air Force Space Command, the National Reconnaissance Office, USC-CSE, Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Institute for Software Research at the University of California, Irvine.
In 2006, GSAW celebrates its tenth anniversary. The conference will take place March 27–30, 2006, at the Marriott hotel in Manhattan Beach, California. The theme will be "Applying Technology to Operational Goals." Paper topics will address issues such as architectural representation and analysis; standards, interoperability, and systems of systems; off-the-shelf software, open-source components, and software reuse; program, risk, and change management; system security and information assurance; mission assurance, test, and integration; transformational and net-centered communication architectures; space and ground trades; operations and sustainment; emerging ground system technologies; and automation and integrated services. Both classified and unclassified panels will be included. For more details, visit http://www.aero.org/conferences/gsaw/.
