On-Board Intelligent Software for Spacecraft Autonomy

Associated with space operations, satellite command and control is costly in terms of manpower and training that run continuously throughout the life of the mission. For a cluster of collaborating satellites, the operations complexity is significantlyincreased. Distributed, virtual, cluster commanding is transparently commanding an entire satellite cluster via any one satellite in the cluster. The development of architectures and algorithms for facilitating distributed, virtual, cluster commanding andautonomous operation provides many benefits. These benefits include reducing the size of the ground crew, the required bandwidth of the satellite-to-ground link, and decreasing the need for scheduled or dedicated ground assets (antennas, control stations,etc.).Additionally, two major areas of concern have been identified for the support of large constellations of satellites: fault management and planning and scheduling.In the past, fault detection, isolation and recovery (FDIR) were the sole responsibility of the Ground system. As more complex formations are developed, the need for FDIR to be addressed on-board at the cluster level is becoming critical to reducing thecost and complexity of cluster operations.Similarly, in order to relieve the ground from individually tasking each element of the constellation, the resolution of goals must be resolved on-board in a distributed manner. To do this, planning and scheduling has to be tightly integrated within theSpace-Ground Architecture.ICS is proposing, in this Phase-II, the further development of an agent-based architecture for real-time autonomous Command & Telemetry systems. The architecture is being expanded to include enhanced adaptive data acquisition and summarization, enhancedexpert system capability including fuzzy logic agents, and a tightly coupled integration with Government off-the-shelf (GOTS) Planning and Scheduling software.