Autonomous Control and Coordination of Formation-Flying Satellite Clusters.

SHAI, in cooperation with our subcontractor, Interface and Control Systems Inc., will develop an operational Mission Planner for Formation-Flying Clusters and demonstrate its potential for use on the TechSat 21 flight experiment. This system will enablepayload scheduling based on detailed orbital and resource constraints for the entire mission. It will maximize the number and quality of observations performed, using a performance predictor to measure quality and to perform sensor selection. It will alsodistribute the observations as evenly as possible among all identified observation targets. Also during Phase II, we will investigate the possibility of hosting a planner/scheduler agent onboard the TechSat 21 satellites. The onboard agent will enablehigh-level commanding of the cluster by automating the synthesis of detailed payload plans.Interface and Control Systems, Inc. will assist SHAI to integrate the Mission Planner well with the TechSat 21 ground station software, and to integrate the onboard planner/scheduler agent with the proposed flight software. If possible, the software willbe tested in the AFRL/VSSS Satellite Testbed.