| INTERFACE & CONTROL
SYSTEMS ANNOUNCES STRATEGIC ALLIANCE WITH LOCKHEED MARTIN FOR SATELLITE
COMMAND AND CONTROL SYSTEMS
COLUMBIA, Md., July 28, 1997 Interface & Control Systems, Inc. and Lockheed Martin Federal Systems company in Gaithersburg, Md., have entered a strategic alliance to leverage each company’s technologies, products and expertise for real time command and control systems. While the initial focus of the alliance will be space applications, the long term focus is on the expansion of these technologies into other command, control and monitoring markets. Under the alliance, the companies will jointly market and develop systems which initially will feature the integration of Lockheed Martin’s Satellite Control System 21 (SCS 21) and Interface and Control Systems’ Spacecraft Command Language (SCL). The integration of the two commercial products and the establishment of the alliance will result in a commercial off the shelf (COTS) product offering industry-unique and leading-edge technology at a very affordable price for commercial applications as well as the most complex satellite command and telemetry systems. SCS 21 is an advanced system for real time telemetry, tracking, and control (TTC) applications. The fully integrated UNIX environment product has evolved from Lockheed Martin Federal Systems’ vast experience over the past 18 years as prime contractor for development and support of telemetry, tracking and control applications used by the U.S. Air Force Satellite Control Network and commercial customers. SCS 21 is part of Lockheed Martin’s command and control system for a new U.S. Department of Defense satellite program. The SCS 21 system provides real time control, monitoring and state of health management for satellites and associated ground equipment. Among the key features of SCS 21: (1) a database driven design that allows simultaneous control of multiple, different satellites with the same SCS 21 software; (2) a plug and play architecture based on an industry standard software bus that allows users to easily integrate their mission specific applications; (3) support for any number of telemetry streams at rates up to 5Mbps each; and (4) display format editing facilities that allow users to define displays as well as edit them in real time without recompiling data or making code changes. The SCL system integrates expert system technology with procedural programming. The SCL Inference Engine and Command Interpreter are integrated with a real-time multi-tasking scheme. This allows the interleaving of procedural scripts (temporal reasoning) with expert system rules (event driven). SCL allows a standard control system to be used throughout a systems life cycle for embedded test equipment, data reduction systems, data analysis and diagnostic workstations, special test fixtures, embedded system controllers, subsystem controllers, avionics units, ground stations, and control centers. SCL has been used in a variety of applications including the Naval Research Laboratory's (NRL) Clementine 1 and NASA ROMPS flight systems, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory J2000 flight system test bed, the Advanced Army Command and Control (A2C2) simulation environment developed for NRL in support of the digitized battlefield, an embedded test system for the Army's Joint Communications Interface Terminal (JCIT) digital radio which is being developed by NRL, and a remote monitoring application in NASA's Kennedy Space Center's Fiber Optic Network. More recently, Interface and Control Systems has been selected to develop the command and control system architecture for the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite, a mission being managed, developed, and integrated by The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) for NASA. Interface and Control Systems is providing the Satellite Control Center (SCC) under contract to JHU, and the instrument test equipment and the instrument flight command and control software under contract to The JHU Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL). This will be the first satellite system that realizes the full benefits of the SCL paradigm being a single COTS tool used for the complete mission life cycle. The SCC will be a nearly 100% COTS solution centered around SCL as the command and control engine. The SCC is being implemented in a UNIX environment on SUN workstations. The SCC will autonomously develop a master activities script that will be uploaded to the satellite on a daily basis. Embedded SCL scripts in conjunction with custom software developed at JHU/APL will autonomously control instrument activities including conducting slew operations of the spacecraft to new targets, target acquisition, target exposures and fault detection and correction. In the FUSE Instrument Data System, SCL will be running in an embedded flight 68020 processor. For the I&T environment, ICS is providing the SCL WINDOWS NT version in a modified PC that will interface to the instrument flight computer to automate and control instrument testing. The databases and scripts will be migrated into the SCC to support flight operations. Lockheed Martin Federal Systems, in addition to systems integration, provides software development for intelligence systems, technologies and systems for satellite navigation and surveillance, and command and control of satellites. Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin is a highly diversified global enterprise principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, and integration of advanced technology products and services. The Corporation’s core businesses span aeronautics, electronics, energy and environment, information and services, space and strategic missiles, systems integration and telecommunications. Employing some 180,000 people worldwide, the Corporation had 1996 sales of approximately $27 billion. Interface and Control Systems with primary locations in Columbia, Md. and Melbourne, Fl. is a small business engaged in the research, design, development and integration of advanced distributed real time command, control, and monitoring systems. Interface and Control Systems employs 40 people and had 1996 revenues greater than $4 million. Satellite Control System 21 and SCS 21 are trademarks of the Lockheed Martin Corporation. Contact information:
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