Enhancing Science and Automating Operations Using Onboard Autonomy
Rob Sherwood, Steve Chien · SpaceOps 2006 Conference · 2006
currently flying onboard the Earth Observing One (EO-1) Spacecraft. This software enables the spacecraft to autonomously detect, track, and respond to science events observed in instrument data. Included are onboard software systems that perform science data analysis, deliberative planning, and run-time robust execution. This software has demonstrated the potential for space missions to use onboard decision-making to detect, analyze, and respond to science events, and to downlink only the highest value science data. Using this science agent, the EO-1 mission has experienced over 100 times increase in science return measured as the number of science events captured per megabyte of downlink. As a result, significant portions of the mission planning & sequencing processes have been automated, reducing EO-1 operations cost by $1M/year. In this paper, we will describe the evolution of the software from prototype to full time operation onboard EO-1. We will quantify the increase in science, decrease in operations cost, and streamlining of operations procedures. Included will be a description of how this software was adapted post-launch to the EO-1 mission, which had very limited computing resources which constrained the autonomy flight software. We will discuss ongoing deployments of this software to the Mars Exploration