Mission planning system for Yahsat

flexplan, GMV’s mission-planning solution, has been chosen by Yahsat, a commercial communications satellite operator based at Abu Dhabi, for its ground activity planning system.

Flexplan’s main function will be generation of operation plans for ground operator activities. The system will also manage and monitor operator activities, notifying operation managers of any need for intervention, launching alarms and generating activity reports to be analyzed afterwards.

For preparing the operation plans flexplan will receive diverse information such as maneuvers and geometric events of the flight dynamics system, operator shifts, user activity requests, etc. The resulting plan can be simultaneously viewed from their desks in real time by operators, flight engineers, team heads, etc.
flexplan will be deployed in Yahsat’s Abu Dhabi operations center during September, after which the system will be customized by Yahsat personnel to make it fully operative. For this purpose Yahsat’s personnel will be trained up in the use of flexplan by GMV personnel.

flexplan is now operating missions for the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), NASA Goddard Space and Flight Center and the United States Geological Survey (USGS). This contract, however represents the first takeup of flexplan in the commercial market and its first ever use for generating operation plans not directly related with satellite operations. This proves the versatility of the system and its capacity for use in a wide range of areas.

Yahsat, is the satellite company of the Mubadala Development Group of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It currently operates two satellites (YahSat 1A and 1B) and has recently announced construction of a new geostationary communications satellite that will give Ka-band coverage to some regions of South America – especially Brazil – and the African continent.