SatConPlan: A Satellite Pre-Pass Contact Planning Aid for Operations Support and Training.

Future plans in both the military and commercial sectors call for increased use of satellite constellations in low earth orbit. These systems significantly increase the burden for ground-based system management because more satellites must be managed, andeach satellite is in view for only brief periods of time. It will be essential to ensure that ground station hardware and personnel are fully prepared to exploit every contact opportunity. SHAI, with our contractor Honeywell Technology Solutions, Inc.,proposes to develop SatConPlan, a pre-pass planning aid that will improve the efficacy and accuracy of preparations for satellite contacts, and that will enable improved training for satellite operators. SatConPlan will combine techniques from IntelligentAgent Technology, Model-Based Reasoning, Planning and Scheduling, and Intelligent Tutoring Systems to support distributed teams of operators during both operations and training.Honeywell Technology Solutions, Inc., as a highly successful provider of satellite operations software and services, will contribute expertise regarding satellite pre-pass planning and operations.The goals of the Phase I research are to thoroughly analyse the satellite pre-pass planning domain, develop knowledge representations and reasoning techniques to codify contact preparation processes and procedures, and prove the feasibility of our approachby building a proof-of-concept prototype.The proposed technology will directly benefit both military (e.g., SBIRS-Low) and commercial LEO constellations, reducing operations risk as well as operations and training costs.