The DECLIC facility has been designed to provide maximum autonomy while using minimum interface with the EXPRESS rack. DECLIC will take advantage of resources delivered by the EXPRESS system and will interface at high level.

The DECLIC facility provides power conditioning, communications, command/control, data storage, and multiple flexible optical capabilities in support to each experiment. The capabilities in data transmission to ground are limited by the current ISS capabilities and will be fully exploited when the ISS network is upgraded.

The DECLIC facility will be operated from the CADMOS, the French User Operation Center located at CNES Toulouse, France.

The crew will have minimal intervention to set up the facility with the insert, to be operated a minimum of 4 to 6 months per year in order to justify its permanent installation on board the ISS for a minimum of 2-3 years.

For this a minimum set of two or three inserts will reside on orbit and be used during most increments to enable science operations to the greatest extent possible during such an extended period.

Exchange of experiment is foreseen but the frequency of exchange will depend on access to schedule, launch, retrieval, and on orbit stowage resources.

As the communication network will have strong limitations at the beginning of the ISS exploitation, the DECLIC facility is designed to run automatically thank to its on-board resident programmation. Experiment telecommanding is foreseen for telescience operations that will permit quasi real-time interaction with the flight experiment when it will be possible and requested. Telecommanding will allow experiment sequence parameters to be modified, partially or totally, depending on the scientific analysis on ground.

Data transmission to ground is currently the limited resource to be shared with other users. It may require several days after the experiment run to have all data on ground. Images stowage on DECLIC hard-disks is foreseen and removable hard-disk drives are implemented to permit the recording of a large amount of data which have been prioritized for recovery with the astronauts return to ground.