International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1993 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Traditional satellite and launch control systems have consisted of custom solutions requiring significant development and maintenance costs. These systems have typically been designed to support specific program requirements and are expensive to modify and augment after delivery. Over the past five years, technical advances have resulted in Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products which greatly reduce the complete life cycle costs associated with satellite and launch control system procurements. These advances, however, have been restricted to specific functional areas of the satellite and launch control system - most notably, telemetry processing and simulation. Until recently, technological advances in the development of COTS products which support functional areas like commanding and mission planning have lagged behind. This paper describes the development and application of a COTS product which provides a highly advanced commanding capability that is tightly integrated with the processing of telemetry data. This closed loop telemetry and commanding system forms the basis of a satellite or launch control system at a fraction of the cost normally associated with systems of this kind.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / After a slow start, the CCSDS Telecommand Recommendation is finally being embraced by a large number of NASA, ESA and NASDA space missions. Even some commercial satellites are exploring the possibility of using this advanced protocol. The CCSDS Telecommand is a closed-loop space communication protocol that offers its users a guaranteed data delivery service, which is essential for the satellite control operations. This paper describes a commercial product that supports the CCSDS Telecommand protocol. This product provides Telecommand uplink segmentation, transfer, coding and physical layer services and Command Operations Procedures (COP). Optionally, it provides corresponding functions at the receiving end for command link verification.

SAPS is currently implementing an EAP. Supervisors are an important link in the EAP process because they are the first persons to identify a troubled employee and to refer the employee to the EAP. Owing to her knowledge of an EAP and her interest in supervisory training, the researcher was asked to assist with the development of a supervisory training programme. The researcher has been employed as a social worker in the SAPS for ten years. In practice it happens that commanders refer troubled employees to the EAP when the commanders do not know what else to do with the troubled employees. At that stage the problems that the employees experience are of such a nature that long-term therapy is needed to attend to them. At times the commanders will act as social workers instead of referring the employee to the EAP. The researcher wanted to establish empirically what the role, knowledge and the attitude of commanders within the SAPS are regarding the EAP. The researcher decided to explore the topic by means of a literature study regarding the EAP in the SAPS and supervisory training and to interview several experts in the EAP in the SAPS and two experts in private organisations. An interview schedule was compiled and tested on one respondent. The information gained from the interview was sufficient and the researcher could go ahead with the data collection. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two percent (2%) of the commanders in area West-Metropole. The researcher interviewed one (1) Senior superintendent, two (2) Superintendents, four (4) Captains and three (3) Inspectors. None of the respondents had previous training in the EAP. A stratified random sample was used to select the respondents. From the information gathered from the respondents, the researcher achieved the objectives of the study and provide answers to the three (3) research questions, namely: • What is the knowledge of SAPS commanders regarding the EAP? • What is the knowledge of SAPS commanders regarding their role within the EAP? • What is the attitude of SAPS commanders towards the EAP? The researcher determined that the respondents had limited knowledge regarding the EAP and the services rendered by the EAP professionals in the SAPS. The respondents all knew that they had to refer the troubled employee to the EAP but some of them first tried to be the social worker before they referred to the EAP. Therefore it is important that the distinctive roles of the commander/supervisor and the EAP are identified. All the respondents felt positive towards the EAP in the SAPS and said that they self would make use of the services of the EAP. Although the researcher could not generalise the findings, sufficient information was provided to make the following valuable recommendations: recommendations regarding the content of a supervisory training programme, the marketing of the services rendered by the EAP in the SAPS and the steps that could be taken to ensure confidence in the EAP. / Dissertation (MSD (Employee Assistance Programme))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Social Work and Criminology / unrestricted

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 27-30, 1997 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / PC technology has progressed to the point that it can very effectively support commercial geostationary spacecraft design, manufacture, test, launch, ground station, and on-orbit mission control activities. Many of the manufacturers that provide VME spacecraft test hardware and software are now providing the same functions and performance for the PC. A PC workstation equipped with single and multiple Pentium processors and Windows NT software can support single and multiple uplinks/downlinks and provide client/server capabilities that perform traditional UNIX client/server operations. Such a PC workstation can provide the functionality, features, and performance necessary for commercial spacecraft board-level test, unit-level test, subsystem-level test, spacecraft bus and payload integration, and ground station monitoring and control, as well as on-orbit mission control activities.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 29-November 02, 1990 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The Loral Instrumentation System 500 configured as an Advanced Commanding and Telemetry System (ACTS) supports the acquisition of multiple telemetry downlink streams, and simultaneously supports multiple uplink command streams for today’s satellite vehicles. By using industry and federal standards, the system is able to support, without relying on a host computer, a true distributed dataflow architecture that is complemented by state-of-the-art RISC-based workstations and file servers.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / Recruiting is the most challenging peacetime assignment for any United States Marine. It involves many internal and external factors that are generally beyond the control of recruiting personnel. In particular, Recruiting Station (RS) Commanding Officers are subject to intense pressure to make their assigned recruiting goals or be relieved from duty. It is thus critical for the Marine Corps Recruiting Command (MCRC) to select only the best-qualified officers to serve as recruiting commanders. This thesis has three main objectives: (1) analyze the current screening and selection process used by MCRC since fiscal 1996; (2) evaluate whether this process is more effective than the previous method; and (3) determine if the process can be improved. To accomplish these goals, the study reviews MCRC's responsibilities, policies, procedures, and rationale in determining the required characteristics of a successful RS Commanding Officer. The methodology relies on a literature review, personal interviews with individuals from all recruiting command levels, and descriptive data on RS Commanding Officers from fiscal 1990 through fiscal 2003. The results suggest that the current screening and selection process is effective and an improvement over the previous system. Recruiting commanders are more experienced, more diverse, and more suited to the task, based on several indicators. Recommendations are offered to change common perceptions of the current process as a "selection board." / Captain, United States Marine Corps

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / In 1998, AlliedSignal Technical Services (ATSC) installed three fully autonomous 13-meter satellite tracking systems for the Integrated Program Office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at the Command and Data Acquisition Station near Fairbanks, Alaska. These systems track and command NOAA Polar Orbiting Weather Satellites and Defense Meteorological Satellites. Each tracking system operates for extended periods of time with little intervention other than periodic scheduling contacts. Schedule execution initiates equipment configuration, including establishing the RF communications link to the satellite. Station autonomy is achieved through use of a robust scheduler that permits remote users and the System Administrator to request pass activities for any of the supported missions. Spacecraft in the mission set are scheduled for normal operations according to the priority they have been assigned. Once the scheduler resolves conflicts, it builds a human-readable control script that executes all required support activities. Pass adds or deletes generate new schedule scripts and can be performed in seconds. The systems can be configured to support CCSDS and TDM telemetry processing, but the units installed at Fairbanks required only telemetry and command through-put capabilities. Received telemetry data is buffered on disk-storage for immediate, post-pass playback, and also on tape for long-term archiving purposes. The system can autonomously support up to 20 spacecraft with 5 different configuration setups each. L-Band, S-Band and X-Band frequencies are supported.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 27-30, 1997 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Lunar Prospector’s project engineering staff selected a Windows PC platform as the RF test console for the Lunar Prospector spacecraft. The spacecraft test team chose the PCbased RF test console because the PC provides a low-cost, common platform with a graphical user interface. The PC provides point-and-click, menu-driven windows that are common throughout the satellite factory. The PC RF test console is being used to exercise the Lunar Prospector spacecraft RF link for RF commanding, telemetry, and ranging signals during factory test, including thermal vacuum chamber testing. For spacecraft command and control at the factory, the PC-based RF test console is networked to a UNIX workstation over RS-422. The PC RF test console and spacecraft interface are controlled through a coax switch residing in a test rack next to the workstation. The PC RF test console is connected directly to the Lunar Prospector spacecraft using coax cable through the spacecraft Telemetry, Commanding, & Ranging (TC&R) RF antenna hat for both transmit and receive functions. The PC RF test console is also connected hard-line to the spacecraft transponder through the transponder RS-422 connection. This connection provides the ability for spacecraft telemetry to be received at the PC at RF or baseband. The same hard-line spacecraft telemetry data is provided to the UNIX workstation for comparison. NASA’s Lunar Prospector project is the first of the Discovery series of “faster, better, cheaper” missions to be competitively awarded. Lunar Prospector project funding was capped by NASA to ensure that no overruns would occur. The mission was funded to support the scientific community’s desire to verify the presence of ice on the moon and collect environmental data to understand the dynamics that may have led to polar ice deposits. The Lunar Prospector mission received funding in 1996 with a launch planned for September 1997