Module for Event Driven Operations on Spacecraft (MEDOS) Expanded for Multi-Agent Decision Making and Teaming

Operations engineers face the task of maintaining the health and functionality of a spacecraft, based on extremely limited information. This task becomes even more complicated when considering lag time between contacts, the light-time delay of bidirectional communications, and the prospect of multiple spacecraft operating simultaneously. Simple pre-programmed time tagged commands become increasingly burdensome in multi-spacecraft missions, particularly when trying to target ephemeral events in space that are difficult to predict with any accuracy. The Module for Event Driven Operations on Spacecraft (MEDOS) puts the operations engineer on the spacecraft. MEDOS takes raw telemetry and fuses them together into physically meaningful quantities that an engineer understands ndash; turning voltages and decay times into ldquo;methane concentrationrdquo;, or turning count rates and field vectors into ldquo;plasma densityrdquo;. Then, MEDOS compares the physical parameters to generalized event definitions that scientists use all the time ndash; ldquo;when the plasma density jumps and the magnetic field reverses direction, we crossed a boundary.rdquo; MEDOS computes a mathematical distance between measured parameters and rules from engineer to provide a numerical confidence in an event occurring. MEDOS does not require any training data, discrete if/then rules, or a PhD in AI to tune the model. All that MEDOS requires is for an engineer or scientist to describe the process that they go through every day ndash; and then MEDOS encodes that process onto the spacecraft. MEDOS is able to analyze the ambient environment in real time, and respond to it in a way consistent with the response of an operations engineer. In Phase II we will expand MEDOSrsquo;s capability for multi-agent teaming with a new module, MADEM (Multi Agent Decision Engine for MEDOS.) We will also port the entire MEDOS framework into NASArsquo;s core Flight System (cFS) and verify + validate MEDOS on flight qualified hardware, readying it for mission deployment.