DATA MANAGEMENT FOR LARGE SPACE SYSTEMS.

The design of efficient data management system architectures for large space systems such as the space station, space platforms and the spaceplane calls for a fresh analysis of the tasks to be performed on-board and the possible solutions. The special features of the large systems currently under consideration include the requirement to tolerate multiple failures, affording damage tolerance, the need to provide communications between a large number of dissimilar data sources, flexibility in terms of system operation and growth and easy maintenance and servicing. Often the need for providing high speed data transfer is also present. This paper reviews the special features of large systems currently being designed, and then derives the requirements to be satisfied by the on-board data transmission network.