INTERCONNECTION GROUND SUBNETWORK

This paper describes the Interconnection Ground Subnetwork (IGS) of th e European Space Agency (ESA) which is the future communication infras tructure to support teleoperations and telescience in the scenario of the Columbus Attached Pressurized Module (APM). Due to the anticipated long duration of the project it is important to distinguish between f unctions and services which will remain unchanged over the lifetime an d those which will dynamically follow the changing payload requirement s. Further the migration to future technologies must be considered whi ch results in successive implementation phases. The paper also present s the ESA and NASA network interface and its present definition. In th e preparation for future IGS implementations the IGS Testbed sustains an important role and provides the platform to demonstrate teleoperati on and telescience communication capabilities during Spacelab missions . Since the IGS capabilities are demonstrated in the ATLAS-2 and 3, an d IML-2 missions these scenarios are presented.