Towards a critical design of an operational ground segment for an Earth observation mission

Abstract The ground segment for the future remote sensing mission Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program (EnMAP; www.enmap.org) is developed by the Earth Observation Center and the German Space Operations Center at the German Aerospace Center. The launch is scheduled for 2017. An operational satellite ground segment is a highly complex heterogeneous system which has to cope with different levels of criticality, novelty, specificity, and to be operated for many years. It consists of equipment, hard- and software as well as operators with their procedures. The strengths of the global coherence of the segment-wide approach bringing these aspects together is examined and not on the local details of segment-specific issues. However, the effects on two software-based elements of the ground segment are considered in more detail, namely the product library and the level 2geo processor. The development methodology and how the critical design of the complete ground segment finished its detailed design phase successfully was achieved is analyzed. As a measure of the maturity of the design, its stability across the project phases is proposed.