Implementation of a reliable satellite commanding and telemetry system

Some technical challenges that were met and trade-offs made in the design and development of the Operational Mission Unique Equipment (OMUE) project installed at the Consolidated Space Test Center (CSTC) at Onizuka AFB, California, are discussed. These challenges included integrating vehicle commanding with a telemetry system utilizing distributed software and hardware processing in such a fashion that no mission data is lost and presenting the operator with a clean user interface. OMUE demonstrates that a commercial telemetry system can be readily adapted to handle day-to-day satellite operations, where high system reliability and fault tolerance are key concerns.