Intelligent, Autonomous Electrical Power System Management and Distribution

EPS-MAESTRO (EPS Management through intelligent, AdaptivE, autonomouS, faulT identification and diagnosis, Reconfiguration/replanning/rescheduling Optimization) substantially leverages previous NASA investments to assemble the correct set of technologies to implement all aspects of the intelligent, autonomous EPS manager. We have significant experience in all required technologies and have already integrated them into a general MAESTRO architecture designed to be easily applied to spacecraft subsystems. Montana State University (MSU) has designed, built, launched, and operated several satellites and has specifically studied in-space PV degradation. In addition to providing substantial knowledge, expertise and practical experience, MSU will also provide real satellite telemetry data and set up a laboratory hardware testbed, using spare MSU satellite hardware, for testing our EPS-MAESTRO prototype in Phase I. They also plan to field an actual EPS-MAESTRO prototype onboard one of their future satellites, in-space, during Phase II. The eventual, ultimate goal is the ability of an onboard autonomous intelligent system to manage the spacecraft EPS itself through the development of EPS-MAESTRO, which can be easily adapted to the EPSs of different spacecraft. EPS-MAESTRO must be sufficiently powerful, general, and computationally efficient and be easily adapted by developers. This will be accomplished using open standards, clearly defined open interfaces, use of Open Source software, and leveraging several previous NASA investments. Phase I research goals are to explore the spacecraft EPS management domain for small satellites and large manned spacecraft, elaborate the AI techniques useful for EPS characterization, diagnosis, replanning/rescheduling/adaptive execution/safing, prove the feasibility of these techniques through prototype development (by prototyping two applications), and develop a complete system specification for the Phase II EPS-MAESTRO system.