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Aerospace

Engineering and Testing of Vital Safety Systems

For more than 20 years, ENSCO has demonstrated its ability to deliver cost-effective mission success throughout the space industry on launch ranges around the world.
 

Reducing Risk and Cost

ENSCO’s engineers help prevent the loss of life and expensive assets by providing safety-critical systems engineering, Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V), and modeling and simulation of critical launch range systems and components. ENSCO performs comprehensive analysis of algorithms, and system, software and circuit designs. We deliver systems engineering; instrumentation integration and networking; modeling and simulation; and IV&V necessary in situations where safety, security or the value of the assets at risk cannot be compromised.

System Performance Evaluation and Verification Win

ENSCO’s aerospace technologies group captured the System Performance Evaluation and Verification (SPEV) delivery order under the University of Dayton Research Institute’s DESP II contract with the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) for the second time. Through this contract, we supply independent system assessments and IV&V on safety-critical systems to the launch ranges for both the Eastern Range at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., and the Western Range at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. Independent of the engineering designer, our team reviews ground safety systems to reduce the possibility of system failure during live operations, ensuring public safety and supporting assured access to space. Additionally, ENSCO expanded its offering to SMC by providing systems engineering support from concept development through design and testing of the Spacelift Range Systems.

ENSCO expanded its system engineering expertise for missile defense by conducting mobile range instrumentation systems evaluation, operational acceptance and training support. These mobile systems are used to help meet the geographical disparate instrumentation requirements of missile defense test events. A key aspect of this work is ENSCO’s high-fidelity Missile Flight Control Officer (MFCO) training that facilitates missions from Kodiak, Alaska, and uses the Alaska Aerospace Development Corporation’s Range Safety and Telemetry System. Our state-of-the-art range safety simulator in Cocoa Beach, Fla., immerses the MFCOs in an operational training environment prior to their deployment to Alaska. ENSCO’s support in this area is critical to the safe and successful execution of missile defense test missions, as demonstrated over the past several missions.

RISE Upgrades for Mission Success

ENSCO’s Real-time Instrumentation Simulation Environment (RISE) system, which is used in training, testing and evaluation of range safety and instrumentation systems for space launch ranges, is also undergoing changes. It is currently in use at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and the Kodiak Launch Complex (KLC), a non-federally owned commercial spaceport on Kodiak Island, Alaska. In 2007, the Alaska Aerospace Development Corporation (AADC), owner and operator of KLC, contracted ENSCO to upgrade the RISE system in operation at KLC. The upgrades incorporated real-time command, destruct and GPS positioning data into the RISE data simulation formats, thus enhancing the operational realism of the RISE data. The RISE system was designed with flexibility, allowing it to be easily tailored to integrate new operational requirements and to be customized for almost any type of industry that relies on real-time data transmission to make critical decisions.

STARS—A New Generation Data Simulator

This past year also marked the introduction of ENSCO’s new generation data simulator, the Simulation, Test and Recording System (STARS). STARS improves the RISE capability by introducing a modular architecture that dramatically enhances the flexibility of the system. The initial STARS-based simulator was delivered to the Florida Air National Guard in early 2008 and will form the basis of the range data simulator scheduled for delivery to the South Korean Agency for Defense Development.

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