On-board planning for New Millennium Deep Space One autonomy

1997

This paper describes the New Millennium Remote Agent (NMRA) architecture for autonomous spacecraft control systems. This architecture integrates traditional real-time monitoring and control with constraintbased planning and scheduling, robust multi-threaded execution, and model-based diagnosis and reconguration. We implemented a prototype autonomous spacecraft agent within the architecture and demonstrated the prototype in the context of a challenging autonomous mission scenario on a simulated spacecraft. As a result of this success, the integrated architecture has been selected to control Deep Space One (DS-1), the rst ight of NASA's New Millennium Program (NMP), which will launch in 1998. It will be the rst AI system to autonomously control an actual spacecraft.

1997

The New Millennium Remote Agent (NMRA) will be the first on-board AI system to control an actual spacecraft. The spacecraft domain raises a number of challenges for planning and execution, ranging from extended agency and long-term planning to dynamic recoveries and robust concurrent execution, all in the presence of tight real-time deadlines, changing goals, scarce resource constraints, and a wide variety of possible failures. NMRA is one of the first systems to integrate closed-loop planning and execution of concurrent temporal plans. It is also the first autonomous system that will be able to achieve a sustained, multi-stage, multiyear mission without communication or guidance from earth. 1 Introduction We are developing the first on-board AI system to control an actual spacecraft. The mission, Deep Space One (DS-1), is the first in NASA's New Millennium Program (NMP), an aggressive series of technology demonstrations intended to push Space Exploration into the 21st century....

2013

NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems Autonomous Mission 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), Near Earth Object (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 crewground communications protocols were employed to assist both crews and ...

1998

This paper describes the Remote Agent flight experiment for spacecraft commanding and control. In the Remote Agent approach, the operational rules and constraints are encoded in the flight software. The software may be considered to be an autonomous “remote agent” of the spacecraft operators in the sense that the operators rely on the agent to achieve particular goals. The experiment will be executed during the flight of NASA's Deep Space One technology validation mission. During the experiment, the spacecraft will not be given the usual detailed sequence of commands to execute. Instead, the spacecraft will be given a list of goals to achieve during the experiment. In flight, the Remote Agent flight software will generate a plan to accomplish the goals and then execute the plan in a robust manner while keeping track of how well the plan is being accomplished. During plan execution, the Remote Agent stays on the lookout for any hardware faults that might require recovery actions or replanning. In addition to describing the design of the remote agent, this paper discusses technology-insertion challenges and the approach used in the Remote Agent approach to address these challenges. The experiment integrates several spacecraft autonomy technologies developed at NASA Ames and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory: on-board planning, a robust multi threaded executive, and model-based failure diagnosis and recovery

1999

In May 1999 state-of-the-art autonomy technology was allowed to assume command and control of the Deep Space One spacecraft during the Remote Agent Experiment. This experiment demonstrated numerous autonomy concepts ranging from high-level goaloriented commanding to on-board planning to robust plan execution to model-based fault protection. Many lessons of value to future enhancements of spacecraft autonomy were learned in preparing for and executing this experiment. This paper describes those lessons and suggests directions of future work in this field.

Space Sciencecraft Control and Tracking in the New Millennium, 1996

NASA has recently announced the New Millennium Program NMP to develop faster, better, cheaper" spacecraft in order to establish a virtual presence" in space. A crucial element i n a c hieving this vision is onboard spacecraft autonomy, requiring us to automate functions which h a v e traditionally been achieved on ground by humans. These include planning activities, sequencing spacecraft actions, tracking spacecraft state, ensuring correct functioning, recovering in cases of failure and recon guring hardware. In response to these challenging requirements, we analyzed the spacecraft domain to determine its unique properties and developed an architecture which provided the required functionality. This architecture integrates traditional real-time monitoring and control with constraint-based planning and scheduling, robust multi-threaded execution, and model-based diagnosis and recon guration. In a ve month e ort we successfully demonstrated this implemented architecture in the context of an autonomous insertion of a simulated spacecraft into orbit around Saturn, trading o science and engineering goals, and achieving the mission goals in the face of any single point of hardware failure. This scenario turned out to be among the most complex handled by each of the component technologies. As a result of this success, the integrated architecture has been selected to control the rst NMP ight, Deep Space One, in 1998. It will be the rst AI system to autonomously control an actual spacecraft.

IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, 2009

An autonomous spacecraft must balance longterm and short-term considerations. It must perform purposeful activities that ensure long-term science and engineering goals are achieved and ensure that it maintains positive resource margins. This requires planning in advance to avoid a series of shortsighted decisions that can lead to failure. However, it must also respond in a timely fashion to a somewhat dynamic and unpredictable environment. In terms of high-level, goal-oriented activity, spacecraft plans must often be modified in the event of fortuitous events such as observations completing early and setbacks such as failure to acquire a guidestar for a science observation. This paper describes an integrated planning and execution architecture that supports continuous modification and updating of a current working plan in light of changing operating context.

IEEE Intelligent Systems, 1998

2002

A novel approach to the design of reactive embedded software systems, called model-based autonomy, is generating significant interest in the space systems community. The goal of the model-based approach is to automate onboard sequence execution by tightly integrating goal-driven commanding with fault detection, diagnosis, and recovery capabilities. This paper describes Titan, a system-level autonomy framework that expands upon previous model-based approaches to configuration management, such as the Livingstone mode identification and reconfiguration system, which was demonstrated on the Deep Space One spacecraft. Titan is a model-based executive that estimates current spacecraft modes, detects and repairs failures, and executes commands, all within a fast sense-decide-act loop. This paper discusses the model-based software technologies implemented within the Titan executive. It describes a case study of the deployment of Titan to a representative space mission, including an overview...