Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Porter, D..
The allocation of scarce spacecraft resources to multiple users has always been a difficult process. This difficulty arises from the fact that there are never enough resources to meet the stated requirements of the scientific investigators who compete to acquire their desired data sets.
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A Market-based system has been developed to assist in mission planning for an earth orbiting synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mission.
Using economic incentives to control costs is a new concept for space missions. The basic tenants of market-based approaches runs counter to typical centralized management techniques often utilized for complex space missions.
The return of science is the fundamental objective of any planetary mission. However, which constellation of science observations constitute the best return of science is hard to evaluate. Past approaches toward planning science observations have been based on co-location of payload scientists who debate the merits of which investigation had the stronger science. This advocacy approach is time-consuming and does not provide appropriate incentives for science teams to reveal their trade-offs. An alternative approach, currently under evaluation by the Cassini Mission to Saturn, is one based on providing better incentives to the science teams. Incentives can produce better tradeoffs because the individuals who can make the best decisions about which science observations to propose, what resources are required to implement the observations, and which observations are most important are the science team's Principle Investigators (PI) themselves.
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The Cassini Resource Exchange was developed to assist the Cassini Science Instrumenmt Manager with the management of the spacecraft's science payload. This system, unlike previous develpment approaches, allocated the entire mass, power, data rate, and budget resources for the science instruments to the Principal Investigators. The result removed the Cassini Project from solving instrument development issues. Problems that did occur were resolved through by the Principal Investigators themselves through the use of a resource exchange.