NASA Goddard Flight Center and European Space Agency Join the Object Management Group; OMG Space Domain Task Force Experiences Continued Growth

    NEEDHAM, Mass.--Aug. 3, 2001--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.

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