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Communication: The Vital Link
Because of the complexity of flying a spacecraft over an extended period of time,
space missions are highly organized. There are teams for this and teams for
that, each performing a set of critically important tasks. And, of course, there is
a project management staff over it all that must pull everything together and
keep the project on schedule and within budget. Later, we will describe the
organization of the TOPEX/Poseidon mission and introduce some of the
"special teams" involved in mission operations, but for now, in
order to give you a more "global" view of what it takes to
conduct an Earth-observation satellite mission, we will look at some of the
critical functions that must be accomplished if a mission is to be a success.
Aside from achieving the proper orbit, communication with the spacecraft is the
single most important factor determining the success or failure of a mission.
Components or science instruments on a spacecraft may fail and impair the
mission to one degree or another, but if the communication link is lost there is
no mission at all. Thus, a great deal of effort goes into designing and
maintaining the communication hardware both on the spacecraft and on the ground.
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