NASA Goddard Flight Center and European Space Agency Join the Object Management Group

The Object
Management Group(TM)’s Space Domain Task Force (DTF) announces its
continued growth with the addition of new members NASA Goddard Flight
Center and the European Space Agency, along with the existing liaison
relationship with the Consultative Committee for Space Data Standards
(CCSDS). The OMG(TM)’s Space DTF is building on the momentum first
created by its inception in September 2000, and after it drew over 60
attendees at the December Space Information Day at OMG’s Technical
Committee Meeting in Orlando, FLA, USA.

“The work underway within the Space DTF is very significant, and
will help to build interoperability standards for NASA and our
contractors,” commented Mike Rackley, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight
Center.

The group’s most recent work includes issuance of a Request for
Information (RFI) for CORBA-based Space Communications and a Request
for Proposal (RFP) for a Telemetry and Commanding Data Specification.
The Telemetry and Commanding Data Specification is focused on defining
a standard software description of the data necessary to command the
spacecraft and to provide telemetry to the ground systems or onboard
systems. Work in progress is focusing on the development of a RFI on
the Space DTF Reference Architecture and an RFP on Telemetry and
Command Data Access Service. The T&C Data Access Service provides
mission control applications with a standard interface for receiving
telemetry parameters and sending commands.

“The European Space Agency is glad to be part of the OMG’s Space
DTF, and we look forward to further standardization activities within
the space domain,” said Carlo Mazza, Head of the Ground System
Engineering Department of ESOC (European Space Operation Center), in
Darmstadt, Germany.

The next meeting of the Space Domain Task Force will be at the OMG
Technical Committee meeting, scheduled for September 10-14 in Toronto,
Canada. New participants are encouraged to attend. More information on
the Space Domain DTF may be obtained from its location on the OMG web
site, at http://www.omg.org/space/.

About The OMG

With well-established standards covering software from design,
through development, to deployment and maintenance, the Object
Management Group (OMG) supports a full-lifecycle approach to
enterprise integration. Based on the established Object Management
Architecture (OMA) and emerging Model Driven Architecture (MDA), OMG’s
standards cover application design and implementation. OMG’s Modeling
standards include the UML (Unified Modeling Language) and CWM (Common
Warehouse Metamodel). CORBA, the Common Object Request Broker
Architecture, is OMG’s standard open platform. OMG also issues the
CORBAservices and a rapidly-growing set of industry-specific standards
in vertical markets including healthcare, telecommunications,
biotechnology, transportation and a dozen other areas. The OMG is
headquartered in Needham, MA, USA, with an office in Tokyo, Japan as
well as international marketing offices in the UK and Germany, along
with a U.S. government representative in Washington, DC.

For information on joining the OMG or additional information,
please contact OMG headquarters by phone at +1-781-444 0404, by fax at
+1-781-444 0320, or by email at info@omg.org. The OMG provides current
information and services for distributed enterprise computing on the
World Wide Web at www.omg.org and www.corba.org. Information about OMG
Japan can be found at www.omgj.org.

Note to editors: CORBA®, The Information Brokerage®, CORBA
Academy®, IIOP® and the Object Management Group logo® are
registered trademarks of the Object Management Group. OMG(TM), Object
Management Group(TM), the CORBA Logo(TM), “The Middleware That’s
Everywhere(TM)”, the CORBA Academy logo(TM), XMI(TM), MOF(TM),
CWM(TM), OMG Interface Definition Language(TM), IDL(TM),
CORBAservices(TM), CORBAfacilities(TM), CORBAmed(TM), CORBAnet(TM),
UML(TM), the UML Cube Logo, “We’re Known By The Companies We
Connect(TM)”, Model Driven Architecture(TM), MDA(TM), OMG Model Driven
Architecture(TM), OMG MDA(TM), “The Architecture of Choice for a
Changing World(TM)”, and Unified Modeling Language(TM) are trademarks
of the Object Management Group. All other products or company names
mentioned are used for identification purposes only, and may be
trademarks of their respective owners.