APSI Case# 1: Pre-planning Science Operations in Mars Express

2007

This paper describes MEXAR2, a software tool that is currently used to synthesize the operational commands for data downlink from the on-board memory of an interplanetary space mission spacecraft to the ground stations. The tool has been in daily use by the Mission Planning Team of MARS EXPRESS at the European Space Agency since early 2005. Goal of this paper is to present a quick overview of how the planning and scheduling problem has been addressed, a complete application customized and put into context in the application environment. Then it concentrates on describing more in detail how a core solver has been enriched to create a tool that easily allows users to generate diversified plans for the same problem by handling a set of control parameters, called heuristic modifiers, that insert heuristic bias on the generated solutions. A set of experiments is presented that describes how such modifiers affect the solving process.

2006

This paper describes a fielded AI system in daily use at the European Space Agency (ESA-ESOC) since February 2005. The tool, named MEXAR2, provides continuous support to human mission planners in synthesizing plans for downlinking on-board memory data from the MARS EXPRESS spacecraft to Earth.

2000

This paper describes an AI based system named RAXEM, developed to support human mission planners in the daily task to plan uplink commands for theMARS EXPRESS spacecraft. The intelligent environment of RAXEM helps the users analyzing the problem and tak- ing planning decisions as a result of an interactive pro- cess. Different aspects have been considered like inte- grating flexible

2003

This paper gives a short overview of a software system developed to support mission planning tasks in the ESA program called Mars-Express. A system named Mexar is described that synthesizes spacecraft operation commands for downlinking the on-board memory according to mission planners requirements. The tool is based on a constraintbased representation, a family of problem solving algorithms and a sophisticated user frontend that allows to understand and manipulate different features of both the current problem and the proposed solution.

2004

This paper describes an experiment of technology infusion into a European Space Agency (ESA) mission. It reports a study conducted in the context of the MARS EX-PRESS mission to address the Memory Dumping Problem of the spacecraft. The paper describes the steps for developing a complete approach aimed at creating an interactive decision aid for the human mission planner called MEXAR. In particular, it is shown how problem solving technology for planning, scheduling and constraint reasoning is integrated with an interaction module to create a set of advanced services for the user.

Planetary rovers require automated systems in order to overcome the difficulties of deep space missions. This paper presents APSI*, an evolution of the APSI framework and QuijoteExpress, its planner intended to improve the performance of previous planners, handle the uncertainty inherent to scenarios like Mars and facilitate the work of the operators using the system

13th International Conference on Space Operations 2014, 2014

The Austrian Space Forum OeWF conducts Mars analog missions with varying location, length and complexity, which include analog astronauts using space suit simulators who conduct a variety of experiments. As well as the scientific and technological benefits gained from these missions, the Flight Plan Team (FPT) focuses on testing different planning strategies for planetary (analog) missions. As the missions tend to involve large numbers of participants worldwide and have high demands regarding experiment time and outcome, they provide a suitable training ground for activity planning and scheduling. Over the course of three missions we applied three different strategies in order to study their overall performance: real-time planning, 3-days-in-advance planning and 1-day-in-advance planning for the OeWF analog missions Dachstein 2012, MARS2013 and World Space Week 2013, respectively. For human planetary missions beyond the Moon, delays in crew-ground communications will rule out real-time planning. The described 1-day and 3-day-in-advanceplanning strategies address this difficulty. For robotic missions, decisions in critical circumstances can be postponed and no lives are at risk, whereas human planetary exploration may require short reaction times and cannot await a response. Complete preplanning is not feasible for manned missions due to their complexity. Additionally, health and safety requirements as well as feedback and interactions, e.g. regarding human-based in-situ decisions on mapping or experiment locations, make complete pre-planning not applicable. Instead, the situation requires detailed advance planning that allows for feedback for mission optimization while giving the astronauts the necessary authority and experiment knowledge to apply autonomous, instantaneous changes to the schedule where necessary. To simulate this situation, an artificial time-delay of 10 minutes in each direction was applied after an initial preparation phase for one of the three analog missions, MARS2013. The remaining two missions have no time-delay. We compare the three planning strategies -realtime, 1-day, 3-days-in-advance -and discuss their implementation together with mission specific advantages and disadvantages: real-time planning allows for instantaneous changes authorized by the Flight Director, but also leads to increased unnecessary changes. These are reduced by advance-planning. Because the request for changes in the activity schedule is restricted to 1 (3) days before, the planning process can be made smoother. However, all crew members have to first adjust to this method. A new challenge with advance planning is that the field crew has to be able to make decisions about changing the activity schedule by themselves. This applies to changes in personnel or activities for health and safety reasons or when equipment is unavailable. The decisions regarding activity changes have to be based on knowledge; this increased level of information has to be carefully prepared. If an experiment cannot be carried out and a replacement has to be determined by the crew, they require knowledge of the region, the requirements and resources and of the priority of the activities planned for the day. By optimizing the planning strategy for analog missions, we prepare an increasingly sophisticated planning strategy for future manned missions to Mars.

2000

This paper describes the ASPEN system for automation of planning and scheduling for space mission operations. ASPEN contains a number of innovations including: an expressive but easy to use modeling language, multiple search (inference) engines, iterative repair suited for mixed-initiative human in loop operations, real-time replanning and response (in the CASPER system), and plan optimization. ASPEN is being used for the Citizen Explorer (CX-1) (August 2000 launch) and the 2 nd Antarctic Mapping Missions (AMM-2) (September 2000). ASPEN has also been used to automate ground communications stations -automating generation of tracking plans for the Deep Space Terminal (DS-T). ASPEN has been used to demonstrate automated command generation and onboard planning for rovers and is currently being evaluated for operational use for the Mars-01 Marie Curie rover mission. CASPER, the soft real-time versions of ASPEN, has been demonstrated with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Mission Data Systems (MDS) Control Architecture prototypes. .

smc-it.org

The space industry has evolved in the past decades with the result that the main satellite operators are in charge of fleets of spacecraft manufactured by different companies with different characteristics. Additionally, many new scientific missions have come up with the quest to reach Mars and the Moon as well as a better knowledge of the Earth, with ever improving instruments and increased data recordings. The operation of multiple platform fleets or highly specialized missions have one thing in common: they require a tool that can plan and schedule while adapting to the ever changing requirements and constraints driven by the mission. flexplan is a COTS Mission Planning and Scheduling (MPS) product that has matured in the past years while integrated in such missions. Its primary goal of offering a flexible solution that can adapt with minor operational impact has been achieved and superseded by an increased focus on performance when multiple platforms and complex operations are present. This paper describes the latest upgrades as well as a sample application of flexplan.

Proceedings of The IEEE, 2009

A number of new tactical planning and operations to ols were deployed on the highly successful Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission. Based on successes and lessons from the MER experience, a number of groups at NASA Ames and JPL have developed a platform for developing integrated operations tools, called Ensemble. Ensem ble is a multi-mission toolkit for building activity plannin

Telematics and Informatics, 1987

The Evolutionary Definition Office (EDO) at the Langley Research Center (LaRC) has the responsibility to analyze and evaluate alternative growth options of the Space Station and its utilization. Under contract to the EDO, Computer Technology Associates (CTA) has developed a PC-based automated mission and resource planning tool, AUTOPLAN. AUTOPLAN's input is a proposed profile of missions, including for each: start year, number of allowable slip periods, mission duration, and requirement profiles for one or more resources as a function of time. The user also inputs a corresponding availability profile for each resource over the whole time interval under study. Subject to the size of a given problem and microcomputer performance limitations, AUTOPLAN finds all integrated schedules which do not require more than the available resources. AUTOPLAN is implemented in Arity compiled PROLOG and executed on an IBM PC/AT with 640 KB memory. There is particular interest in small-scale planning and scheduling systems in the Space Station program because of the trend toward decentralizing these functions. The iterative resolution and recursion features of PROLOG greatly simplify the programming of this problem and make it easy to customize or generalize the solution evaluation algorithm. The quantitative capabilities of the tool and several postprocessor interpretive aids presently under assessment are described and a realistic sample application of the tool suite is presented.

2006

Solving the science data downlink problem for Mars Express (MEX) has been a challenge. An artificial intelligence (AI) based tool, MEXAR2, has been developed and integrated in the mission planning process that allows the user to quickly and effortlessly generate and analyse a dump plan for any planning period. MEXAR2 is the first AI-based tool in an operational environment on-ground at ESOC and it is the successful implementation of a prototyping study performed before the launch of MEX. The paper explores the challenging requirements levied on the MEX science data downlink, the different solutions for generating a dump plan before implementing MEXAR2. It further describes in detail the interfaces and functions of the software and provides an evaluation of the operational benefits from using the application compared to previous solutions.

The ambitious goal of the Spacecraft Monitoring & Control (SM&C) Working Group of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) is to define a set of standardized, interoperable mission operation (MO) services, which allow rapid and efficient construction of cooperating space systems. Such services will have to be general enough to cope with the various needs of existing and future missions, but at the same specified enough to be practically usable. This paper presents some ideas to deal with this difficult task drawn from existing architectures and interfaces used in AI advanced software systems for planning and scheduling.

2007

IEEE Expert / IEEE Intelligent Systems, 2004

one of NASA's most ambitious science missions to date. The rovers will be launched in the summer of 2003 with each rover carrying instruments to conduct remote and in-situ observations to elucidate the planet's past climate, water activity, and habitability.