[CMC] CNSA invitation to CCSDS membership

[Kearney, Mike W. (MSFC-EO01)]

To: Michael (Cheng) Wang <mchwang at cnsa.gov.cn
<mailto:mchwang at cnsa.gov.cn> >

 

Dear Michael (Cheng),

 

I was referred to you by Mr. Adrian Hooke, whom you met at a recent
meeting in Geneva.  He advocated to you that CNSA should consider
becoming a member of the CCSDS committee.  Subsequently, we conducted a
poll of the representatives of the 10 agencies in CCSDS, and we received
a unanimous response that we should extend an invitation to CNSA to
become a full Member of CCSDS, the 11th space agency with this status. 

                                        

This message is to provide you with some background information, and to
begin the coordination to adopt CNSA as a full Member of CCSDS.  

 

If CNSA agrees with this, then I need to know the address within CNSA to
send the formal letter to invite CNSA to become a full CCSDS Member.  If
you are to be the CNSA representative to CCSDS, then we are comfortable
sending that letter to you.  However, if CNSA processes require the
letter to go to another individual within China, just let us know the
name, address, etc.     

 

If CNSA accepts this invitation, the next event would be for CNSA to
attend the next CCSDS Working Group Plenary meeting in Crystal City,
Virginia, USA (March 10-14) 2008, and the next CCSDS Management Council
(CMC) meeting in Japan (June 2008).  After CNSA sees the CCSDS teams at
work in those meetings, you should have a better perspective on how to
participate more fully in the future.    

 

Of course, much background information on CCSDS is available on
www.ccsds.org <http://www.ccsds.org> .  From that page, if you click on
the text "major
<http://public.ccsds.org/participation/member_agencies.aspx>  space
agencies in the world
<http://public.ccsds.org/participation/member_agencies.aspx> " you will
see the list of agencies that are full Members (currently no agency from
China).  If you click on the left of that screen on "Observer agencies"
you will see the list of 24 Observer agencies, including the Chinese
Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Space Technology
(CAST).  CAST has participated in the past, though they have not
attended meetings for several years.  CAS has just attended their first
meeting last month.  

 

Also, CCSDS is designated as an ISO Standards Committee, specifically
Technical Committee 20 Subcommittee 13 (TC20/SC13).  Because ISO is
represented by nations rather than space agencies, the Chinese
representation to TC20/SC13 is officially SAC (Standardization
Administration of China), but SAC delegates that role to CASI (Chinese
Astronautics Standards Institute).   CASI attended occasionally in the
past, but has not attended in the last several years.   

 

As you see, the history of China within CCSDS is that there are some
Chinese organizations involved as only CCSDS Observer agencies, or as
ISO representatives.  Attendance at CCSDS meetings has been relatively
infrequent.  We hope that all of these Chinese agencies (CAS, CASI,
CAST) will now fully support the CNSA as the lead representatives to
CCSDS and ISO.  With CNSA participating as a full Member, we would
expect to see the technical support from China become consistent and the
management support become routine.  

 

If your agency decides to accept the offer of full Membership, the
obligation of CNSA is primarily to provide technical expertise from
China (either CNSA or other China agencies) to some of the working group
meetings, and to provide a CCSDS Management Council (CMC)
representative.  The CMC representative is expected to participate in a
majority of the scheduled face-to-face CMC and ISO/TC20/SC13 meetings,
and also to respond on behalf of China to the online polling process,
which is the primary decision mechanism in CCSDS.   While some agencies
cannot attend all meetings, we would expect a full Member agency to send
a Delegate to most CMC meetings, which are held twice per year at
various locations of the Member agencies around the world.   Other minor
functions are to provide an agency status overview at CMC meetings,
perhaps consider hosting some CCSDS meetings, and so forth.   Mostly,
CCSDS is interested in having Member agencies communicate with the team.
Communication is the key to our work, and allows us to overcome most
other obstacles.   

 

For your information, the usual schedule is for the one-week technical
meeting to be held in the Spring (usually in April), and in the Fall
(usually in October).  In the past, the CMC/ISO meetings were held the
week immediately following the technical meeting, but we recently voted
that the CMC meeting would nominally follow the technical meeting by a
few months.   So, twice a year, technical people (CNSA, CAST, CASI,
CAS?) would support the working groups, and separately, twice a year, a
management representative (CNSA) would support the management (CMC/ISO)
meetings.   

 

So I recommend that the next open questions for CNSA to consider are:   

*         How will CNSA coordinate the other more technical
organizations from China concerning their participation in CCSDS?  

*         Does CNSA need to ask SAC to consider whether the ISO
delegated representation needs to be reassigned from CASI to CNSA?   

 

Please let me know if there is anything that CCSDS can do to help CNSA
gather information to help your decision.   For example I can also
provide the names of the representatives from CAS, CAST, CASI, and the
dates they attended past meetings, etc.  

 

Thank you very much for your time and interest.  I hope that this will
open up a new and stronger communications channel between the
international agencies of CCSDS and the CNSA, and also with the other
agencies in China that will join us in exploring space.   

 

   -=- Mike

 

Mike Kearney

CCSDS Management Council Chairman

CCSDS General Secretary

 

NASA MSFC EO-01

256-544-2029

 

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