The Joint Test Campaign for Verification and Validation of Shared Operational Processes on NISAR

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) Spacecraft – planned to be launched in 2024 - is one of the first major partnerships between the US and Indian space agencies. The NISAR earth satellite will use L-band and S-band radar imaging to make global observations of land and ice-covered surfaces for wide-ranging applications and studies of natural hazards, biomass, sea level rise and agriculture. NASA’s Mission System V&V (Verification and Validation) team on NISAR is responsible for ensuring the ground system and team of operators are ready for flight operations in order to achieve joint NASA-ISRO mission objectives. This includes testing operational software, procedures, teams and interfaces to certify the system prior to launch. For typical NASA/JPL missions, a series of system-level and process tests (known as thread tests) that increase in complexity over time are run, culminating in Operational Readiness Tests (ORTs) which exercise critical activities and procedures in a flight-like environment. For NISAR, a new set of tests, known as Joint Thread Tests (JTTs), were added to the test campaign prior to the scheduled ORTs in order to provide both NASA and ISRO teams hands-on training opportunities in interacting with each other on joint processes. The tests demonstrated key processes such as navigational maneuver development and execution, command product planning and execution, and the flow of data between the two agencies. The Joint Thread Test campaign was very successful – it revealed process and interface issues early in order to allow the teams to develop resolution plans prior to the ORTs, catalysed the setup of network infrastructure, and helped develop a good working relationship between the NASA and ISRO operations teams. This paper will provide a detailed look at the need and motivation for the NASA-ISRO Joint Thread Test campaign, and elaborate on their differences from other testing conducted on the project, including system integration and operational readiness tests. It will summarize joint thread test development, execution, results and lessons learned. It will also cover the challenges encountered during testing with a team distributed across opposite sides of the planet, and complications added by their execution during a pandemic. Finally, it will include plans for the Operational Readiness Tests that will be executed in the months leading up to launch