Last December, the agency had given the highly successful XMM-Newton a four-year extension, moving its expiration back to march 31, 2010. That was the easy decision, ESA said, given �the incredible science results" the satellite has provided since its launch in 1999. To date, more than 1,000 scientific papers have been published based on XMM data.

The extension meant, however, that mission controllers ESA's Space Operations Centre would face maintaining and running XMM's mission control software � which was developed in the 1990s � for more than 10 years, assuming the spacecraft remains healthy. In comparison, most home computers and corporate PCs use core operating system software that is no more than a few years old.

The satellite's old SCOS-1-based operating system would require increased maintenance budgets in the coming years, because fewer contractors would retain the ability to maintain the software. Also, contractors who originally knew how to operate the software had upgraded their skills and many moved on to more modern systems, such as the newer and far more capable software, SCOS-2000.

Other ESA missions had already implemented the new SCOS-2000 mission control software and spacecraft controllers, system analysts and engineers at ESOC were already trained on it.

So XMM mission controllers decided to install an in-flight operating-system upgrade � something no one had ever attempted before. ESA senior management imposed an additional challenge when they demanded that the upgrade not interrupt the flow of science data from the satellite.

"SCOS-200 is maintainable into the future, is compatible with current and future computer hardware and is more flexible; it's also the new ESA standard," said Oscar Ojanguren, deputy spacecraft operations manager for XMM.

The complex upgrade project began in late 2002 at ESOC and ran though late 2004. The upgrade team involved flight operations and other engineers at ESOC and related agencies, as well as extensive support from industry teams.

"Our plan was to build the new ground segment based on SCOS-2000 and get it running in parallel to the existing system, then switch it on and compare science and flight control data output. If both systems gave the same results, we could simply turn the old system off," said Dietmar Heger, XMM Newton's spacecraft operations manager. "It was like building an entirely new ground segment for a new mission."

Despite the challenges, the upgrade proceeded as planned and by March 2005, a series of live tests had been completed using SCOS-2000 to control XMM and receive science data while the older SCOS-1 system was kept in operation.

"There was a lot of extra work for engineers at ESOC," says Heger, "but there was great teamwork between ESA establishments and industry support teams."

ESA said the older system was turned off for the last time in June 2005, and the XMM ground segment project ended with a successful upgrade.

ESA had allocated a fixed-price contract amount of 2.0 million Euro, but the project was concluded for less than 1.5 million Euro, and was complete well in advance of the August 2005 eclipse deadline.

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