Roger Thompson – Deputy Area Director, MOIMS

Roger Thompson is currently Deputy Area Director of the Mission Operations and Information Management (MOIMS) Area and also Deputy Chair of its Spacecraft M&C Working Group. He is a British (BNSC) representative to CCSDS and works for UK-based SciSys Ltd.

Roger has worked in the field of spacecraft ground operations systems for over 20 years and has experience of a wide range of mission classes and operational institutions.  These include: the joint ESA/NASA Ulysses mission; three generations of Meteosat for ESA and Eumetsat; commercial and military telecoms fleet operators; smallsats; future LEO Earth Observation concepts; and MEO navigation constellations.  He has also been active for much of his career in the development of software tools to support operations automation, from early forays using Expert Systems to current Java and XML based solutions.  While UK National Expert Representative to OMG’s Space Domain Task Force, he supported the initiatives to define an XML-based standard for Spacecraft Database exchange, now available as the XTCE standard.

Recent experience includes definition of satellite control facilities for Europe’s satellite navigation programme (Galileosat) and studies into the application of service oriented architecture in ESA’s next generation Ground Operations System (EGOS).

His current focus in standardisation is on end-to-end application level services for mission operations.  He sees this as an enabler for re-usable and interoperable software components for mission operations, both on the ground and on-board.

Roger holds a BSc (Honours) in Chemistry from the University of Bristol, England and is registered as a Chartered Engineer (CEng) with the British Computer Society (BCS).