An Intelligent Autonomous Executive for cFS Distributed Spacecraft Missions

Distributed Spacecraft Missions (DSM) have become increasingly important in the effort to extend the capabilities of instruments to gather critical Earth and Space science data. DSMs, which include constellations, formations and clusters, have already been employed and have been proposed for several future space science missions. The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission is a current Solar-terrestrial Probe mission comprising four identically instrumented spacecraft flying in a relatively close formation to study the Earth?s magnetosphere. Although they open up new science frontiers and new possibilities for satellite design, constellations will be limited if their operations costs scale with the number of satellites. A key enabling technology for future DSMs will be their ability to operate with a level of autonomy to leverage the capabilities of a standard-sized team of satellite operators to safely operate a fleet of satellites. Our innovation is the development of a cFS App suite, called the Distributed Automation Suite for Heuristic Execution and Response (DASHER), which extends the current state of the art in onboard automation for spacecraft flight software. The main component of DASHER is a mission manager that can execute science observation and engineering plans intelligently. DASHER uses a common planning language to intelligently execute plans.

There are a number of distributed spacecraft missions identified in the NASA Decadal Survey and they will be very expensive to operate without a higher level of automation than the current spacecraft state of the art. The software developed under this proposal will is reusable and will enable multiple missions as part of the cFS library.

Agencies outside of NASA, like the DoD have begun to take an interest in the cFS reusable flight software platform. The software developed under this proposal will be equally applicable to non-NASA missions that have multiple spacecraft and require automation. Outside of the spacecraft market, autonomous systems need reliable autonomy and a standardized planning language. The software developed under this project will useful in other autonomy markets.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 3) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

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