Astronauts
Astronauts will install the International Space Station Agricultural Camera (ISSAC™) into the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF) onboard the International Space Station, which will allow it to view the Earth through a perfectly clear window designed for scientific observations. Once setup and activation of ISSAC is complete, little crew support is needed for normal operations. If they have a need to take ISSAC images themselves, astronauts will be able to do so via onboard ISSAC crew interface software.
End Users
Image Requests
An extensive network of end-user research participants, including farmers, ranchers, and other participating users will send image requests to an ISSAC Science Operations Center (SOC) at the University of North Dakota. Such requests will be submitted very much like end users currently define their desired Areas Of Interest via Digital NGP.
Request Timeline
Requests will need to be received 4-7 days in advance, but will be delivered to the requestor via Digital NGP within 1-2 days of acquisition.
UND Students
From within the ISSAC SOC, student operators will receive ISSAC imagery requests from, and will convert these requests into specific sets of commands for uplink to ISSAC. Through coordination with NASA for ISS and WORF rack operations, these image acquisition and other ISSAC operational commands will be uplinked to the ISSAC payload software, which will take images over specific areas of the Earth. Resultant imagery data will be downlinked and transferred to UND for processing and quick delivery to image requestors.
NASA Operations
NASA Marshall POIC
Operations of scientific instruments and payloads aboard the ISS are controlled by the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville AL. The Payload Operations and Integration Center (POIC) at Marshall coordinates allocation of onboard resources (power, cooling, data links, crew time) among the many different experiments.
The POIC also routes commands from experiment operators such as the ISSAC SOC to their respective systems onboard, collects payload telemetry from the ISS, and forwards it on to the designated experiment operation centers.
When and Where Images Can Be Taken
Typical Operation
Typically, imaging operations will occur only when the ISS is over the northern Great Plains and Rocky Mountain regions of the United States, though imagery could be collected worldwide throughout all ISS orbits whenever the Earth surface below is in daylight.
Needs-Driven Dynamics
Frequency and location of imaging will be highly dynamic, driven by needs of a wide variety of end user research partners, but will be much more extensive during the growing season of the northern plains (April - October). At peak times, 2-4 images per orbit for 4 consecutive orbits are anticipated.
