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The Atmospheric Dynamics Mission ADM-AEOLUS was selected in 1999 as the second Earth Explorer Core mission part of ESA's Living Planet Programme. Scheduled for launch in September 2008, AEOLUS will provide global observations of wind profiles paving the way for future meteorological satellites. Achievement of this last ambitious goal requires a substantial decrease in the operational effort associated to the routine mission phase. This in turn calls for implementation of an exceptionally high degree of on-board autonomy and definition of an innovative operational concept aimed at minimising ground intervention both in nominal and contingency situations. This paper will present the AEOLUS on-board autonomy requirements and resulting Failure Detection, Isolation and Recovery (FDIR) architecture. A novel mechanism for telecommand scheduling based on spacecraft orbit position, as provided by the on-board GPS receiver, will be introduced. The paper will then describe the associated Operational Concept allowing to reduce the number of ground station passes required to support the routine mission to one daily pass for real-time housekeeping telemetry reception, and a single telecommand upload session performed on a weekly basis. Finally, a summary of the overall ground segment will be provided and the AEOLUS Flight Operations Segment (FOS) specific facilities, based on the latest ESOC ground software infrastructure, presented.