Mission Accomplished at First Combined Meeting of OMG Space Domain Task Force and The Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems.

NEEDHAM, Mass. -- Organizations Advance Standards in Space Software Technology at Meeting in Athens, Greece, April 11-15, 2005

Members of the Object Management Group(TM) (OMG(TM); www.omg.org) and the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS; www.ccsds.org) successfully held their first combined meetings in Athens, Greece, from April 11 to 15, 2005. Following a combined plenary seminar, members of the two organizations met in both individual and combined working groups with a shared goal of advancing space domain standards.

This and future planned co-located meetings combine the CCSDS' space communications expertise with the architectural benefits of the OMG Space Domain Task Force (DTF), conferred by both OMG's Model Driven Architecture(R) (MDA(R)) and Unified Modeling Language(TM) (UML(R)), as well as work in Real-time, Embedded, and high-assurance distributed computing. Once jointly developed standards are adopted by the two organizations, space technology will be firmly at the forefront of industry architecture.

Combined Plenary Space Standards Seminar

On Monday afternoon, April 11, more than 100 members of both the OMG DTF and the CCSDS gathered for a half-day seminar that surveyed both groups' work in space technology standards. The groups agreed to split responsibility for various projects, with the CCSDS taking the lead on the Spacecraft Monitor and Control project and the OMG overseeing the Operations Procedure Model. Each organization will closely follow the work of the other and continue to coordinate their standards development efforts. Based on the success of the Athens meetings, the groups will meet again during the OMG Technical Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, the week of September 12-16, 2005.

Dr. John D. Kelley of NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, CCSDS General Secretary and Chair, CCSDS Management Council, said, "The fundamental role of the CCSDS is to develop communications standards that meet the stringent demands of today's missions to space, and to promote the use of those standards wherever applicable. We are pleased with the progress made during the OMG-CCSDS joint meetings in Athens and believe that ongoing cooperation with the OMG will help extend terrestrial systems into the space domain."

"The response to this first-ever combined meeting of the CCSDS and Space DTF has been overwhelmingly positive. The spirit of cooperation was very much in evidence and everyone left the meeting with great expectations for further progress at the upcoming Technical Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia," said Dr. Richard Soley, Chairman and CEO of OMG.

Information Links

OMG's home page is www.omg.org. Information about the MDA is collected at www.omg.org/mda. All OMG specifications may be downloaded free of charge from www.omg.org/specifications. Information regarding CCSDS working group meetings as well as access to all CCSDS standards and protocols may be found by visiting www.CCSDS.org.

About the CCSDS

Established in 1982 by the world's most influential space agencies, the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) provides well-engineered space data handling standards to enhance interoperability and cross-support, while also reducing risk, project cost and development time.

A pioneer in international cooperation in space, the CCSDS is made up of leading space communications experts representing 28 countries, its founding member space agencies, 22 observer space agencies and over 100 private companies. CCSDS national member space agencies represent Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Russia, Canada and the United States, as well as the multi-national European Space Agency.

To date, more than 300 missions to space have chosen to fly with CCSDS protocols and the number continues to grow. For more information on participation or to access CCSDS standards and protocols free of charge, please visit http://www.CCSDS.org.

About the OMG

With well-established standards covering software from design and development, through deployment and maintenance, and extending to evolution to future platforms, the Object Management Group (OMG) supports a full-lifecycle approach to enterprise integration which maximizes ROI, the key to successful IT. OMG's Modeling standards, the basis for the MDA(R), include the Unified Modeling Language(TM) (UML(R)) and Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM(TM)). CORBA(R), the Common Object Request Broker Architecture, is OMG's standard open platform with hundreds of millions of deployments running today. Headquartered in Needham, MA, USA, the Object Management Group is an international, open membership, not-for-profit computer industry specifications consortium. More information about OMG can be found at www.omg.org.

Note to editors: MDA, Model Driven Architecture, OMG Logo, UML, IIOP and CORBA are registered trademarks, and OMG, Object Management Group, MOF, MDA Logos, CWM, Unified Modeling Language and UML logo are trademarks, of Object Management Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.