Autonomous Payload Operations on the Lunar Gateway

In response to NASA STTR topic T4.04, subtopic 1 - Autonomous operations and tending of science payloads, Stottler Henke proposes to developnbsp;Autonomous Payload Operations for Gateway ExperimEnts (APOGEE),an operational concept, system architecture, and integrated set of software components for enabling autonomous payload operations on the Lunar Gateway. APOGEE will automate short-term planning, adaptive task execution, and problem detection and management. It will invoke payload-specific data analyses, coordinate with the POIC, and will provide authoring and modeling tools for specifying the knowledge used by the APOGEE software. The payload operations autonomy enabled by this technology will greatly enhance the science value provided by unmanned spacecraft such as the Lunar Gateway. The proposed research is innovative because it will implement intelligent autonomy that can operate over long periods of time with very limited human supervision. When developing this system, we will draw upon Stottler Henke-developed tools such as the Aurora intelligent scheduling system, the SimBionic intelligent agent toolkit, and the Intelliface autonomous systems architecture. We will also apply our experience using NASA technologies such as the EUROPA planning system and the Action Notation Modeling Language.nbsp;nbsp;