ABSTRACT
Pressure to reduce the cost of operations has led to studies of the benefits to be gained if both the operational data and the data handling processes were designed from the beginning to conform to a set of standards. A distributed operations system is defined as an operational system where one or more functions are physically removed to a location remote from any other function so that all voice and data interactions must be accomplished indirectly through an electronic medium. The applicability to spacecraft mission operations systems for remotesensing missions appears to be highest in areas of component design, planning, scheduling, component status determination, problem diagnosis, data analysis and interpretation, mathematical analysis, and ground system configuration maintenance. When the data acquisition is completed he is notified, and he is free to roam through the collected dataset, request and receive various products, again without reference to operational considerations.
