SpaceOps2011 Workshop

14-16 June 2011
The Cosener's House, Abingdon, UK

Richard Holdaway

Welcome to the website set up in support of the SpaceOps2011 workshop which is taking place from 14th to 16th June in Oxfordshire, England. This workshop is being hosted by RAL Space under the auspices of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) of the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC (link opens in a new window)). Details of the workshop can be found on the other pages of this website.

This workshop is the ninth in a regular series of biennial (in odd years) international conferences that started in 1995 at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK as RCSGSO - Reducing the Costs of Spacecraft Ground Systems and Operations.

RCSGSO changed from a parallel-session conference format to a focused, non-parallel, limited theme workshop at its eighth meeting in JAXA/Tsukuba in 2009 when it became formally incorporated into SpaceOps (link opens in a new window)and took the new name SpaceOps Workshop. The 2011 workshop is addressing the three themes of:

• Plan management systems for space missions
• Collision avoidance
• Agency-industry-academia partnerships

SpaceOps itself is more formally known as the International Committee on Technical Interchange for Space Mission Operations and Ground Data Systems. It was founded in 1990 to foster continuous technical interchange on all aspects of space mission operations and ground data systems, and to promote and maintain an international community of space operations experts.

SpaceOps provides a technical/managerial forum in biennial (in even years) international conferences for experts of space operations (mission and ground segment designers, industry, mission operators, engineers in charge of mission logistic support, technical and administrations managers etc.) to discuss and promote technical concepts, emerging methodologies and measures for advanced space operations.

It is in the spirit of providing the broadest possible managerial and technical interchange between space agencies, academia, and industry that SpaceOps and RCSGSO were both established. The SpaceOps workshops provide a highly focused environment for the discussion and debate of satellite operational issues where the emphasis is still on increasing operational productivity and performance and so helping to leverage an actual cost benefit for future space missions.

Wishing you a good and productive workshop,

Prof Richard Holdaway
Director, RAL Space