The Generalized Processing Chain for BIRD and FireBIRD Mission

The FireBIRD mission has been designed to detect and monitor dynamic high temperature events, such as wild fires or volcano eruptions. In order to provide calibrated and geo-referenced data in near real time to users, a ground processing system is going to be established and deployed in the downstream chain in the national ground segment in Neustrelitz. The ground processing system consists of the Payload System Management (PSM) and one or more Instrument Processing Facility (IPFs). Due to the experimental nature of small satellite missions the components of the ground system have been often specific solutions. The design of the FireBIRD ground segment uses a modular design with separate control and payload data interfaces. For data interfaces abstract data descriptions are used in order to achieve a mission independent design to a large extend. A design constraint is to separate processing control components from data processing components as far as possible. The goal is to achieve extendibility and reusability of the processing components as well as portability of the IPF to other systems and migration for future missions.