BepiColombo Data Handling and Archiving Operations Concept 

Fernando PŽrez-L—pez(1) Santa Mart’nez(1), Alan Macfarlane(2), Pedro Osuna(2), Mauro Casale(1)
1 BepiColombo MPO Science Ground Segment
2 ESA Science Archives Team
European Space Astronomy Center (ESAC), 28691 Villanueva de la Ca–ada, Madrid, Spain

   BepiColombo is an interdisciplinary ESA mission to explore the planet 
Mercury in cooperation with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency 
(JAXA). The mission consists of two separate Mercury orbiters: ESA's 
Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and JAXA's Mercury Magnetospheric 
Orbiter (MMO), which are dedicated to the detailed study of the planet and 
its Magnetosphere. 
   The MPO Science Ground Segment (SGS) is responsible for generating, 
optimizing, distributing and preserving the science data and science data 
products from the science payload/instruments of the BepiColombo MPO 
mission, ensuring a maximized science return. This paper presents the 
Science Data Handling and Archiving (DHA) operations concept including 
the justification and the main advantages. This concept was originally 
presented in November 2012, to the MPO instrument teams and will be 
implemented by the BepiColombo MPO Science Ground Segment and the 
ESA Science Archives Team in coordination with the MPO Instrument 
Teams.  This Data Handling and Archiving Operations Concept covers the 
different data processing options chosen by the MPO instrument teams 
being compatible with the archiving procedures and the existing data 
standards (mainly NASA's Planetary Data System, PDS) and protocols. It 
also implements an efficient operational quality control that can be used for 
example, as input for rescheduling or for detection of pipeline bugs and data 
errors. This paper describes also in detail the archiving concept by including 
a central archive (BepiColombo Archive Core System, BACS); storing 
science data products, science objectives, science planning information, 
relevant housekeeping telemetry, calibration data, etc. This central archive 
will be used operationally from launch and will evolve during the mission to 
be used for long term archiving. It will be the central point of information 
exchange between MPO instrument teams protecting data rights before and 
after data proprietary period. 
   The DHA operations concept described in this paper presents a highly 
integrated system used from planning to generation and distribution of 
science products; allowing full traceability of entire DHA processes for 
monitoring purposes. Note also that the integration of the archiving steps 
into the primary data flow will guarantee that products distributed to the 
team members for analysis during the nominal mission will be the products 
available in the long term archive. This DHA concept will allow all complex 
processing, analysis, human interactions and decision steps to be captured in 
the long-term archive for future users to be analyzed.