Improving Spacecraft Operations by Leveraging World Wide Web Technologies

The last decade saw an Internet revolution that left few businesses untouched. In many companies that previously didn't think themselves as part of the IT industry, email and intranet are now a part of daily work. Spacecraft operations traditionally are a computer and network oriented trade. However more often than not the new technologies are slow take hold in the operation centres. Traditional concerns about security and safety didn't allow crossing the barrier between data on paper and the operational world, between offices and control rooms freely. At the German Space Operations Centre a project was undertaken to introduce a growing system of intranet services that started by assisting the mission preparation and is now strongly interweaved with actual day-to-day operations. After successfully supporting nine missions we present a variety of tools and applications made possible by using intranet technologies. It is pointed out how to manage content, observe security aspects, and make the system efficient and reliable. Finally the effect on people is shown