Mission Control Concepts for Robotic Operations (MICCRO)

2013 IEEE Aerospace Conference, 2013

Operations (AMO) project conducted an empirical investigation of the impact of time delay on today's mission operations, and of the effect of processes and mission support tools designed to mitigate time-delay related impacts. Mission operation scenarios were designed for NASA's Deep Space Habitat (DSH), an analog spacecraft habitat, covering a range of activities including nominal objectives, DSH system failures, and crew medical emergencies. The scenarios were simulated at time delay values representative of Lunar (1.2-5 sec), NEO (50 sec) and Mars (300 sec) missions. Each combination of operational scenario and time delay was tested in a Baseline configuration, designed to reflect present-day operations of the International Space Station, and a Mitigation configuration in which a variety of software tools, information displays, and crew-ground communications protocols were employed to assist both crews and FCT members with the long-delay conditions. Preliminary findings indicate: 1) Workload of both crewmembers and FCT members generally increased along with increasing time delay. 2) Advanced procedure execution viewers, caution and warning tools, and communications protocols such as text messaging decreased the workload of both flight controllers and crew, and decreased the difficulty of coordinating activities. 3) Whereas Crew workload ratings increased between 50 sec and 300 sec of time delay in the Baseline Configuration, workload ratings decreased (or remained flat) in the Mitigation Configuration. Destination Earth Distance (km) 1-way Time delay (s) Lunar 38,400,000 1.3 NEOs (close) variable variable Mars (close)

■ This article provides an overview of the nature and role of autonomy for space exploration, with a bias in focus towards describing the relevance of AI technologies. It explores the range of autonomous behavior that is relevant and useful in space exploration and illustrates the range of possible behaviors by presenting four case studies in space-exploration systems, each differing from the others in the degree of autonomy exemplified. Three core requirements are defined for autonomous space systems, and the architectures for integrating capabilities into an autonomous system are described. The article concludes with a discussion of the challenges that are faced currently in developing and deploying autonomy technologies for space.

2007

The Rand Publications Series: The Report is the principal publication documenting and transmitting Rand's major research findings and final research results. The Rand Note reports other outputs of sponsored research for general distribution. Publications of The Rand Corporation do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of the sponsors of Rand research.-iii-PREFACE The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) has for several years (through 1977) supported the design and technical evaluation of a passive communications satellite (PACSAT) by the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International). In 1977, the Defense Communications Agency (DCA) asked The Rand Corporation to examine the utility of PACSAT, as well as other passive satellite designs to support a communications link between the National Command Authority and the airborne strategic bomber force. The present study examines the use of PACSAT in a communications link to the MX mobile-missile sites. That ...

2012

This paper presents the design, planned utilization and implementation of an end-to-end demonstration prototype for On-Orbit Servicing (OOS) type missions. Within the study "Mission Control Concepts for Robotic Operations (MICCRO)" in the project phase I the underlying concepts have been developed, aiming to find a representative mission control concept for robotic space missions. After presenting these conceptual ideas, the demonstration setup using the example of an OOS type mission, developed in project phase II, is described as deployed at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. Using this facility, aspects like the handovers between mission phases and consequence on roles and responsibilities can be assessed. A particular emphasis is also put on new functional components like operator support functions on ground, communication gateways or an integrated Mission Control System (MCS) for the satellite platform and the robot in space.

Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR), 2016

Autonomy means ability to self-govern, decide and be self sufficient within the resource constraints. The autonomous satellite control and anomaly handling capability is the challenging task for the development of future spacecrafts. The ultimate goal of autonomy is to reduce human factor, (in resolving degradations, failures/reconfiguration and health checking of various subsystems) latency (in case of interplanetary explorations) without affecting the mission objectives. Space organizations have already experimented to validate on-board autonomy along with other technology experiments. Though redundancy is provided for the subsystems, degradation and fault management has been identified as one of the major requirements for spacecraft autonomy. The design and development of the software forms the hard core of the autonomous system and depends on how best the Agents are designed. These agents must have mission independent engines but mission specific models. Some are already flight tested while some are being proposed. The best solution could be the heterogeneous combination of the technologies to achieve the required level of autonomy. It is suggested that the use of autonomy would eventually cut down the Mission Operation and Data Analysis (MO&DA) costs. By on-board autonomy, daily housekeeping tasks such as telemetry processing, attitude control, and orbit control could be completed autonomously onboard, with all the significant information attached in the telemetry data.

2004

Space mission operations are extremely labor and knowiedge-intensive and are driven by the ground and fl!ght s stems. inclusion of an autonomy capabilit c~ have drqatic effects on mission o erations. %e describe the current (more conventionalf mission operations flow foy the Earth &secing-l (EO-1) s acecraft as well as the more autonomous operations to which we are transitioning as part of El e Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment (ASE).

Proc. 10th Biennial Int'l …, 2006

Current NASA plans envision human beings returning to the Moon in 2018 and, once there, establishing a permanent outpost from which we may initiate a long-term effort to visit other planetary bodies in the Solar System. This will be a bold, risky, and costly journey, comparable to the Great Navigations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Therefore, it is important that all possible actions be taken to maximize the astronauts' safety and productivity. This can be achieved by deploying fleets of autonomous robots for mineral prospecting and mining, habitat construction, fuel production, inspection and maintenance, etc.; and by providing the humans with the capability to telesupervise the robots' operation and to teleoperate them whenever necessary or appropriate, all from a safe, "shirtsleeve" environment.

2006

In January 2004, NASA began a bold enterprise to return to the Moon, and with the technologies and expertise gained, press on to Mars. The underlying Vision for Space Exploration calls for a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system and beyond; to conduct human expeditions to Mars after successfully demonstrating sustained human exploration missions on the Moon. The approach is to "send human and robotic explorers as partners, leveraging the capabilities of each where most useful." Human-robot interfacing technologies for this approach are required at readiness levels above any available today. In this paper, we describe the HRI aspects of a robot supervision architecture we are developing under NASA's auspices, based on the authors' extensive experience with field deployment of ground, underwater, lighterthan-air, and inspection autonomous and semi-autonomous robotic vehicles and systems.

2001

The LAAS 1 architecture has been developed over the years in a robotic context, to control autonomous robots from the low level control loop up to the mission planning and task execution. It defines a consistent set of methods and tools to enable and ease the integration of such diverse treatments. Similarities between the robotics domain and the space domain seem to indicate that, after being used on mobile robots, the LAAS architecture could now be used onboard satellites and autonomous spacecraft. In particular, we present in detail two components of the architecture which are particularly critical to the space domain: the Faults Detection/Protection system, and the Planning module. For these two components, we also briefly present ongoing works and researches to extend and improve the existing tools and approaches.

2010

As the International Space Station (ISS) flies over the