Off-the-shelf mission planning is possible: FlexPlan does it

Every scientific satellite ground segment architecture has its particularities, but they all share certain elements such as the mission planning and scheduling system. This system is highly specific to each mission because of the specific nature and architecture of each mission´s ground segment, as well as the specific needs of the satellites themselves. Developing a new mission planning system from scratch for each mission is a costly endeavor. In order to provide a method for efficiently reusing mission planning systems (and thereby, significantly reducing costs), GMV has developed a generic mission planning kernel called FlexPlan. FlexPlan is a highly configurable tool which covers the end-to-end loop of mission planning. It allows users to adapt the system to their requirements quickly and easily. FlexPlan has been implemented in such a way that it can be operated by nonexperts and can be easily customized to many different types of platforms and missions