A comparative study of Spacecraft Control Centers and SCADA Systems

In order to assure the remote control in fusion machines or in industrial processes, SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems are used while the remote control of space systems is assured by satellite control centers (SCC). In this series of slides the author studies the similarities, constraints and differences of both systems, the presentation is a view from the space side. The first similarity is the geographic distribution: globally one nominal control center and numerous worker/ research staff in many countries. SCC and SCADA scope commonalities include no direct access to the machine, no big red stop button, and large number of interdependent and highly dynamic parameters. Among functional commonalities we have synopsis, alarms or trend analysis for monitoring and for control we have on-board automatism, high speed on-board loop and low speed network loop for human decision and reflex actions. In space systems scheduling is a core task because access times depend on orbit and ground stations and there are very few security aspects except for launch and reliability is assured through hardware redundancy. (A.C.)