[CMC] Summary: CCSDS Area Directors/J.Rush meeting, 20 Jan 07

[Adrian J. Hooke]

1. On 20 January 2007, John Rush gave a lunchtime talk on the "NASA Space 
Communication & Navigation Architecture" to the CCSDS plenary body during 
their January 2007 meeting. His slides are at:
http://public.ccsds.org/sites/cwe/cesg/default.aspx
Meetings Info; 2007 Winter folder

2. Following the talk, John met with the CCSDS Area Directors and selected 
working group chairman for a private interchange. Concern was expressed 
that if international participation in future communications and navigation 
infrastructure development is important, then NASA should not act 
unilaterally and thus get too far ahead of the other agencies.

3. John indicated that it was his position that (except for the spectrum 
framework, which has already been coordinated with potential partner 
agencies) it is his intention to be fully consultative with the 
international community in making technical decisions.

4. John described the "Coding, Modulation, and Link Protocols (CMLP) Study" 
that has just started within his NASA Systems Planning Working Group and 
indicated that it is his intention to brief the interim results of that 
study to the Interagency Operations Advisory Group (IOAG) meeting in Spain 
in June 2007 http://www.ioag.org.

4. Concern was expressed by some of the CCSDS Area Directors that while the 
IOAG is an effective high-level management coordinating body, it only has 
six agencies supporting it, it only meets once per year and that it does 
not have an established technical organization to support it. It is also 
not clear whether it contains comprehensive representation from the mission 
community or whether all potential partner agencies in upcoming Exploration 
activities will be included. Accordingly, waiting until June to achieve 
broad international technical coordination may be inadvisable.

5. It was therefore agreed that CCSDS technical personnel would be given 
the early opportunity to review and comment on the work of the CMLP study. 
To accomplish this, John Rush and Adrian Hooke were tasked with 
establishing the technical contacts so that monthly reports and analysis 
from the CMLP group can be distributed (between now and June) to key CCSDS 
personnel for review and comment.

6. Post-meeting, a teleconference was scheduled by John so that the CMLP 
and CCSDS technical leadership can discuss the logistics of this 
arrangement. This teleconference will be held during the CCSDS Engineering 
Steering Group meeting in Colorado Springs on 24 January at 11:30 
Mountain/13:30 Eastern. The goal is to get at least four rounds of 
technical interchange before the IOAG meeting in June.

6. As an aside, it was noted that the IOAG was formed as a product of an 
Interoperability Plenary that was held in Paris in June 1999 
http://www.ioag.org/iop1_summary.html and it was suggested that it may be 
very useful to reconvene such a Plenary sometime later in 2007 to review 
progress and relationships during the past seven years.

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