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Completed TRL 6 (started at 4, targeting 6)
Autonomy has become an essential requirement for NASA missions beyond low Earth orbit. The DSM (Distributed Systems Mission) project, especially, needs autonomous systems to support many different constellation scenarios which require handling: communications delays, emerging science opportunities, and rapid resolution of any detected faults, as well as quick coordination among many spacecraft in a constellation. The DSM EDP (Event Driven Planning) module uses an event-driven software architecture that has the ability to handle all of the above requirements via: flexibility, asynchronous messaging, and modern AI techniques including: machine learning, reinforcement learning, and modern planning algorithms.
In order to enable current and future NASA missions, which are increasingly far away from Earth, autonomous systems are absolutely required, for several reasons. The primary reason is the communication delay involved with missions that fly beyond low Earth orbit. In order to respond to dynamic and emergent science opportunities, NASA spacecraft must be able to intelligently respond to events on-board, because it will not be possible to communicate with ground systems in a timely manner, to address mission priorities. Another crucial reason for autonomy is the need for rapid fault detection and remediation, which again must be done on-board to deal with critical faults quickly. The DSM EDP module provides a software architecture that supports asynchronous event handling in an efficient and coordinated fashion both on-board and among groups of spacecraft which are working together within a constellation.
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