[CESG] "Consensus technical agreement of the participating CCSDS Member Agencies"

[Hooke, Adrian J (9000)]

Eduardo: as you are well aware, we are having some issues with the Liaison between SC14 and the CCSDS Navigation working group in the context of the Conjunction Data Message (CDM). In this case, the SC14 Liaison - Dr. Finkleman - has taken on the task of getting the document reviewed by a wide outside community, including ""those who operate the nearly 300 subscribing satellites" (his quote). Unfortunately, we have very little direct contact with that constituency, and Dr. Finkleman has so far refused to reveal who they are or allow us to have direct contact with them. He is also complaining that our CDM development schedule (agreed to by the Navigation WG) is too aggressive for him to gather comments from the outside users. Without positive contact with those users, we have no way of knowing whether or not that claim is true.

A concern has arisen about the CCSDS boilerplate, which says:

"This document has been approved for publication by the Management Council of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) and represents the consensus technical agreement of the participating CCSDS Member Agencies. The procedure for review and authorization of CCSDS Recommendations is detailed in the Procedures Manual for the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems, and the record of Agency participation in the authorization of this document can be obtained from the CCSDS Secretariat at the address below."

That implies that the CDM standard, when published, only represents the views of the CCSDS Agencies. Implicit in that statement is that CCSDS Observer and CCSDS Associate members also agree to its contents, since they are alerted to all review and are invited to comment. However, in the case of the CDM we are accepting RIDs from outside users (filtered via the SC14 Liaison) that come from unattributed sources who are neither Associates nor Liaisons. In fact, Dr. Finkleman's own home organization http://www.centerforspace.com/aboutus/ has not even bothered to register as an Associate (see http://public.ccsds.org/participation/associates.aspx).

There is some indication that when the CDM gets sent to ISO, an attempt will be made to declare that the CDM "only" represents the views of space Agencies, and that therefore another ISO standard development needs to be initiated (presumably by SC14) to produce a CDM that represents the views of external organizations. This would in effect be a "standards war" that would confuse the community and delay the adoption of the CDM, and we need to do everything in our power to head it off.

One possibility is to require that every outside organization that contributes RIDs to a CCSDS document must have some form of official "standing" within CCSDS, either as an Associate or as a Liaison. In the case of the CDM, that could probably be accomplished quite simply, by inviting Dr. Finkleman's home organization (CSSI) as well as the Satellite Data Association http://www.space-data.org/sda/ to become CCSDS Associates.

My question to you - and the CMC - is as follows: should it be a requirement that any RID submitted from a non-Agency source must come from an organization that has declared an affiliation with CCSDS, either as an Associate or as a Liaison?

Best regards
Adrian

Adrian J. Hooke
Chairman, CCSDS Engineering Steering Group



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