Star One C3 acceptance for its satellites program
A very important milestone for GMV took place between the months of September and October 2011: the acceptance of Star One C3 satellite program. The on-site acceptance was carried out at three different StarOne sites – an Embratel company: Rio de Janeiro, Guaratiba and Tangua, all in Brazil.
Overall, GMV has delivered six fully - integrated ground systems to the satellite manufacturer, Orbital Sciences Corporation, and the satellite operator, Star One. Those six systems are hifly®– a GMV satellite control center product, focusGEO– GMV’s flight dynamics suite, matool, sigo, spes– power budget tool, and smart rings– a payload reconfiguration tool. For each of the delivered systems, GMV conducted several different training sessions between the months of October and November. These training sessions allowed the operators and engineers to familiarize themselves with the different systems and the C3 and STAR-2 platform customizations.
A set of automated operational procedures have been also delivered. These procedures are run from autofly, a GMV automation tool of hifly®, that allows a complete automation of the main activities to be carried out on the spacecraft. The hifly® and focusGEO systems for C3 satellite have been integrated to the previous version of these systems for B2, B3 and B4 satellites that are currently operational.
During the acceptance, GMV performed end-to-end tests to validate the communication and functionalities between the ground elements of the Star One control center. This success is a very important achievement for GMV which confirms the confidence that Orbital and Star One have in the high quality software and satellite control center products that GMV provides its clients.