[CESG] Following on Daniel's slides

Tue Feb 11 16:14:05 UTC 2025

Dear Erik, Jim, all,

Many thanks for the feedback. I made some adjustments on the slides based on
your comments (see the update).

I do believe the main “fear” that we should mitigate is the perception
(probably not entirely wrong) that CCSDS so far has no (or very little)
expertise in the Lunar PNT domain but still wants to “push” into the field
as an “expansion of the business”. That was very clear when I talked to
Cheryl a few weeks ago. As such, the main message I am aiming for is to
outline the benefits of working with CCSDS as an organisation (reaching all
major space agencies, affiliation with ISO, well recognised,  synergies with
other CCSDS domains that are needed to build the full picture, etc.).
Basically, extend the hand and its up for them to take it. Because lets be
honest, if they don’t there is very little we can do about it. They were
also very cautious when it came to (a) duplication of effort/ overlaps e.g.
with ICG – this is why I am offering them to come with the same people to
CCSDS and (b) the “slow nature” of CCSDS. For the latter, we should be able
to offer them quick solutions aka “lets take a look together on the work
that has already been done for Lunar PNT e.g. by LunaNet and use CCSDS to
make it an international,  consensus-based, standard”.

I do also agree with Jim and Peter that an architecture would be very
helpful, in particular to put together all the building blocks needed for a
Lunar PNT system from the various WGs. We should work on it in parallel. But
for the sake of showing quick progress, I recommend not to wait for it to be
done before we proceed. 

And I also agree that we have not yet finalised the discussions on working
group competence, but as Erik said, we need to pass a simple message. In the
last CESG meeting we agreed (as minuted by Klaus-Jürgen) that the main
responsibility will be with the (then evolved) Time Management WG with other
working groups (and this was the intention on slide 3) to support them as
needed.

Does this make sense?

Cheers
Daniel

PS: Cheryl also complained that the discussions taking place in the CESG (at
least from the Fall meetings) regards to CCSDS approach to Cislunar PNT are
totally untransparent to the technical people actually working on these
topics (including her and her team in LunaNet) and I believe she has a
point. I would recommend that we prepare a few slides on these aspects for
the plenary session in June including also the feedback from the community
that we hopefully get this week. Would you agree to this (we can discuss in
our next telco)?

ESA – European Space Agency
Dr. Daniel Fischer (he/him) I  Lead Ground Systems Engineering Architect

Ground Segment Engineering and Innovation Department
Directorate of Operations
ESOC I Robert-Bosch-Str. 5, 64293 Darmstadt, Germany
Tel: +49 6151 902718
Daniel.Fischer at esa.int <mailto:Daniel.Fischer at esa.int>    I
<http://www.esa.int/> www.esa.int

From: CESG <cesg-bounces at mailman.ccsds.org> On Behalf Of Barkley, Erik J (US
3970) via CESG
Sent: 10 February 2025 21:06
To: CESG <cesg at mailman.ccsds.org>
Subject: Re: [CESG] Following on Daniel's slides

CESG Colleagues,

I tend to support the approach, ideas that are in the “Role of CCSDS with
respect to PNT at the Moon” document.  I think that taking on a PNT effort
in CCSDS cannot just be one single working group. And I think it should be
the system engineering area in conjunction with the CESG that figures out
how to prioritize and look at the standards that need to be produced. It may
be that this is really not so much given we already have, presumably, a good
start with the signal format from ICG.  Having said that, it may be that it
is easiest for a more public audience to grasp "expansion" of a working
group in CCSDS to consider PNT more thoroughly for the moon. I will note
that the proposed group here is technically not the "Timing WG” as noted in
the presentation, but really rather the “Time Management WG". Given that
this is in the system engineering area, then this is probably going in the
right direction.   

With regard to the document, it may well be that some sort of magenta book
codifying what is good practices ultimately makes sense, but I don't think
you want to lead with that in the presentation. I worry that this will come
across as too much “PhD-ing” (theory) versus getting towards practical
solutions. At the same time, I think we could may be add something in the
presentation to make it clear that one of the advantages of CCSDS would be
the ability to marshal and orchestrate and/or tune as necessary supporting
standards that might be needed to get to a proper international PNT solution
for the moon.  So a suggestion for slide 4 could be to add a bullet point
like:

*	Ability to address supporting standards to facilitate complete PNT
systems needs

(nodes that support PNT delivery will of course need to be managed, implying
trajectory determination, collision assessment, telecommand, telemetry,
etc., for these nodes, all of which CCSDS addresses via its suite of
standards)

Slide 3 of the presentation – the Navigation WG and “Timing WG” (really
“Time Management WG”) boxes are present throughout the entire set of
animations.  Perhaps this is intentional to highlight two of the key groups
that would likely be involved with PNT?  But I find it detracts quite a bit
from trying to present an overview of the CCSDS technical areas.

Best regards,

-Erik

From: CESG <cesg-bounces at mailman.ccsds.org
<mailto:cesg-bounces at mailman.ccsds.org> > On Behalf Of Lux, Jim (US 3370)
via CESG
Sent: Monday, February 10, 2025 10:13
To: CESG <cesg at mailman.ccsds.org <mailto:cesg at mailman.ccsds.org> >
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [CESG] Following on Daniel's slides

Daniel’s slides and my ideas sort of crossed in the mail.

In the attached, Peter Shames and I came up with some thoughts (not intended
for direct distribution, more as thoughts to feed into what we might want to
do).  I was thinking that maybe CCSDS could define a PNT architecture
(within the framework we already have) – defining PNT unique aspects:
satellites, pseudolites, ground stations, users, control segment – everyone
has their own preferences for the actual implementation, but CCSDS could at
least define a common way to describe their implementation. 

Jim Lux

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