Inspiration for Future Autonomous Space Systems
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Autonomy Missions Space Systems inspiration explor↗
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Astronomical Performance of the Engineering Model rsted Advanced Steller Compass
The Danish geomagnetic microsatellite, rsted, is an autonomous sciencecraft which is scheduled for a May 1997 launch into polar orbit. It is produced by a consortium of universities, industry, and government and is Denmark's first national spacecraft. NASA support includes JPL real sky evaluation of its star tracker, the Advanced Stellar Compass (ASC).
mission↗
Innovative Software for Sampleretrieval Missions in Space
Deep space missions forretrieving samples fromplanetary bodies, comets,asteroids, or moons look tosophisticated software tomake operational decisionswithout human intervention.
sample retrieval↗
Astrobiology Survey of a Lava Cave at Lava Beds National Monument by a Rover Carrying a Remote Sensing Instrument Payload
We report here on a survey of a lava tube cave by a rover that is instrumented for astrobiology missions. The NASA Ames testbed rover, CaveR, was deployed in Valentine Cave in Lava Beds National Monument (N. CA, USA) during August of 2018. The rover carried an instrument package consisting of Near Infrared and Visible Spectrometer System (NIRVSS) a point spectrometer operating in 1590-3400 nm range, sensitive to H2O and -OH bearing minerals, pyroxenes, and carbonates (Roush, et al 2018); the bore sighted Drill Operations Camera (DOC), a monochrome imager illuminated by LEDs at 410, 540, 640, 740, 905 and 940 nm; a Realsense ™ depth sensor system for 3D model generation; and a high resolution DSLR stereo camera. The payload was mounted on a tiltable instrument platform attached to the left side of the rover. The rover was driven manually in the cave by field operators, following instructions from a remote science operations team, and simulating a mission concept with science-guided autonomy. A simulated mission took place for 3 days with a team of 3 scientists selecting targets and interpreting data from the payload. To begin the mission, the rover drove along one wall of the cave imaging continuously with the Realsense in 20 m cave segments, three total. At the start of each day, the images from a 20m segment and a panorama stitched from them were provided to the science team to examine. The science team used these data to prioritize specific points along the cave wall for the collection of NIRVSS, DOC, and DSLR data. The objective of the data collection was to identify and study putative biological and mineralogical features in the cave. The data were delivered in xGDS, a customized mapping, planning, and data base management software developed at NASA Ames (Lee, et al 2013). Once the targets for further observations were selected, a plan for collecting the observations (positions in the cave and pointing for each requested observation) was constructed using xGDS and delivered to a rover team to execute the science data collection plan. Acquired data were delivered back to the science team for analysis. Preliminary results from the experiment illustrate the utility of the system (rover plus payload) to study the cave geology and mineralogy and its potential for identifying biomineral features.
Wong, Uland↗
Levels of On-Board Autonomy: Application of ML to Mission Architecture
No abstract available
Mandrake, Lukas↗
Development of a Lander Autonomy Testbed for Ocean Worlds Missions/ Exploration and Utilization of Extra-Terrestial Bodies
No abstract provided
Thomsen, M.↗
Mass Economy Evaluation for Integrated ECLSS and Propulsion Architecture
As missions in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) lengthen and extend to deep space, minimizing resupply needs becomes vital for sustaining crewed operations. Traditional life support systems depend on consumables resupplied from Earth, a method that is increasingly impractical for missions beyond LEO, such as lunar outposts or Mars transit. Long-duration missions require more efficient, autonomous systems that can recycle essential resources, particularly water and oxygen, to minimize the frequency and mass of resupply missions. The Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) is essential to such missions, with the International Space Station (ISS) serving as a testbed for advanced water recovery and partial oxygen recycling via physico-chemical methods. Yet, ECLSS and propulsion subsystems generally operate independently, despite overlapping requirements and potential areas for synergy. For instance, ECLSS byproducts, water, CO₂, and hydrogen, could be repurposed for propulsion, potentially reducing dedicated propellant mass and increasing overall system efficiency. One promising approach is to develop shared-resource architectures that integrate ECLSS with propulsion systems. This study examines the potential of such integration through the Sabatier CO₂ reduction process, focusing on water management as a key factor in system mass trade-offs. The Sabatier reaction produces water and methane from metabolic CO₂ and electrolytic hydrogen, partially closing the life support loop and providing methane, which could serve as a propellant. This integration could minimize waste, reduce resupply requirements, and enhance mission mass efficiency. A dynamic modeling framework will be used to simulate resource flows over long missions, capturing interactions between life support and propulsion. By comparing integrated versus separate system configurations, the study aims to quantify mass benefits and penalties, informing future habitat designs and trade studies for missions prioritizing autonomy and mass efficiency.
ECLSS↗
Mass Economy Evaluation for Integrated ECLSS and Propulsion Architecture
As missions in low Earth orbit (LEO) lengthen and extend to deep space, minimizing resupply needs becomes vital for sustaining crewed operations. Traditional life support systems depend on consumables resupplied from Earth, a method that is increasingly impractical for missions beyond LEO, such as lunar outposts or Mars transit. Long-duration missions require more efficient, autonomous systems that can recycle essential resources, particularly water and oxygen, to minimize the frequency and mass of resupply missions. The Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) is essential to such missions, with the International Space Station (ISS) serving as a testbed for advanced water recovery and partial oxygen recycling via physico-chemical methods. Yet, ECLSS and propulsion subsystems generally operate independently, despite overlapping requirements and potential areas for synergy. For instance, ECLSS byproducts, water, CO 2 , and hydrogen, could be repurposed for propulsion, potentially reducing dedicated propellant mass and increasing overall system efficiency. One promising approach is to develop shared-resource architectures that integrate ECLSS with propulsion systems. This study examines the potential of such integration through the Sabatier CO₂ reduction process, focusing on water management as a key factor in system mass trade-offs. The Sabatier reaction produces water and methane from metabolic CO 2 and electrolytic hydrogen, partially closing the life support loop and providing methane, which could serve as a propellant. This integration could minimize waste, reduce resupply requirements, and enhance mission mass efficiency. A dynamic modeling framework will be used to simulate resource flows over long missions, capturing interactions between life support and propulsion. By comparing integrated versus separate system configurations, the study aims to quantify mass benefits and penalties, informing future habitat designs and trade studies for missions prioritizing autonomy and mass efficiency.
ECLSS↗
Mission Simulation Toolkit
The Mission Simulation Toolkit (MST) is a flexible software system for autonomy research. It was developed as part of the Mission Simulation Facility (MSF) project that was started in 2001 to facilitate the development of autonomous planetary robotic missions. Autonomy is a key enabling factor for robotic exploration. There has been a large gap between autonomy software (at the research level), and software that is ready for insertion into near-term space missions. The MST bridges this gap by providing a simulation framework and a suite of tools for supporting research and maturation of autonomy. MST uses a distributed framework based on the High Level Architecture (HLA) standard. A key feature of the MST framework is the ability to plug in new models to replace existing ones with the same services. This enables significant simulation flexibility, particularly the mixing and control of fidelity level. In addition, the MST provides automatic code generation from robot interfaces defined with the Unified Modeling Language (UML), methods for maintaining synchronization across distributed simulation systems, XML-based robot description, and an environment server. Finally, the MSF supports a number of third-party products including dynamic models and terrain databases. Although the communication objects and some of the simulation components that are provided with this toolkit are specifically designed for terrestrial surface rovers, the MST can be applied to any other domain, such as aerial, aquatic, or space.
Pisaich, Gregory↗
Fundamental research in artificial intelligence at NASA
This paper describes basic research at NASA in the field of artificial intelligence. The work is conducted at the Ames Research Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, primarily under the auspices of the NASA-wide Artificial Intelligence Program in the Office of Aeronautics, Exploration and Technology. The research is aimed at solving long-term NASA problems in missions operations, spacecraft autonomy, preservation of corporate knowledge about NASA missions and vehicles, and management/analysis of scientific and engineering data. From a scientific point of view, the research is broken into the categories of: planning and scheduling; machine learning; and design of and reasoning about large-scale physical systems.
Friedland, Peter↗
Science Goal Driven Observing: A Step Towards Maximizing Science Returns and Spacecraft Autonomy
While recent missions have made great strides in the ability to autonomously monitor and react to changing health and physical status of spacecraft, little progress has been made in responding quickly to science driven events. Also, the new generation of space-based telescopes will generate data at an unprecedented rate. Yet, while on-board data processing and storage capability will increase rapidly, bandwidth for downloading data will not increase as fast and can become a significant cost of a science program. For observations of inherently variable targets and targets of opportunity, the ability to recognize early if an observation will not meet the science goals, and react accordingly, can have a major positive impact on the overall scientific returns of an observatory and on its operational costs. If the observatory can reprioritize the schedule to focus on alternate targets, discard uninteresting observations prior to downloading, or download them at a reduced resolution its overall efficiency will be dramatically increased. We are investigating and developing tools for a science goal monitoring (SGM) system. The SGM will have an interface to help capture higher-level science goals from the scientists and translate them into a flexible observing strategy that SGM can execute and monitor. SGM will then monitor the incoming data stream and interface with data processing systems to recognize significant events. When an event occurs, the system will use the science goals given it to reprioritize observations, and react appropriately and/or communicate with ground systems - both human and machine - for confirmation and/or further high priority analyses.
Jones, Jeremy↗
Medical System Concept of Operations for Mars Exploration Mission-11: Exploration Medical Capability (ExMC) Element - Human Research Program
NASA’s exploration missions to Mars will have durations of 2-3 years and will take humans farther away from Earth than ever before. This will result in a paradigm shift for mission planning, spacecraft design, human systems integration, and in-flight medical care. Constraints on real-time communication, resupply, and medical evacuation are major architectural drivers. These constraints require medical system development to be tightly integrated with mission and vehicle design to provide crew autonomy and enable mission success. This concept of operations provides a common vision of medical care for developing a medical system for Mars exploration missions. It documents an overview of the stakeholder needs and goals of a medical system and provides examples of the types of activities the system will be used for during the mission. Development of the concept of operations considers mission variables such as distance from Earth, duration of mission, time to definitive medical care, communication protocols between crewmembers and ground support, personnel capabilities and skill sets, medical hardware and software, and medical data management. The information provided in this document informs the ExMC Systems Engineering effort to define the functions to be provided by the medical system. In addition, this concept of operations will inform the subsequent systems engineering process of developing technical requirements, system architectures, interfaces, and verification and validation approaches for the medical system. This document supports the closure of ExMC Gap Med01: We do not have a concept of operations for medical care during exploration missions, corresponding to the ExMC-managed human system risk: Risk of Adverse Health Outcomes & Decrements in Performance due to Inflight Medical Conditions. This document is applicable to the ExMC Element Systems Engineering process and may be used for collaboration within the Human Research Program.
Urbina, Michelle↗
Designing Autonomy into Interfaces for Long-Duration Missions
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user interface↗
Localization of Ad-Hoc Lunar Constellations in Communication Failure Modes for Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy
As lunar missions increase in complexity inspired by NASA’s Artemis Program, they will require reliable and sufficient capability of the Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) system to support their scientific objectives. In addition, NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program initiates the proliferation of public and private exploration partnerships using small satellites from commercial and private organizations, expanding traditionally confined low Earth orbit to be used for missions beyond geosynchronous orbit (Zucherman et al., 2022). Therefore, the Lunar PNT system is also required to provide navigation services compatible with the smaller platforms being sent by the public and private sectors, like CubeSats. However, traditional approaches to deep space missions’ navigation based on ground radio facilities have difficulties in providing sufficient support for the increasing number of users and communication at a distance from the Earth (Kaplev et al., 2022). In particular, the existing Lunar navigation technologies such as weak signal global positioning system (GPS) and deep space network (DSN) are not able to ensure operations of the upcoming small-scale Lunar missions due to their limitations in localization performance as well as capacity aspects. Another way to provide Lunar PNT service is to create a dedicated Lunar global navigation satellite system (GNSS) constellation, like GNSS systems on Earth. Space agencies like NASA, ESA, and JAXA are now developing the lunar communications relay and navigation systems (LCRNS) and Lunar navigation satellite systems (LNSS). In their systems, satellites will be deployed in moon orbits to provide the communication, positioning, navigation, and timing (CPNT) service at the lunar south pole region where the Artemis base camp will be expected (Murata et al., 2022). Meanwhile, common challenges considered in lunar PNT research arise from poor geometry of the terrestrial GNSS satellites when seen from the lunar user, highly perturbed lunar orbits, and limitations in power, size, and cost of the equipment on lunar satellites (Iiyama et al., 2023). It is also not clear if there will be enough Lunar users to support the cost and resources this would require as the Low-cost surface missions may not be able to support the large power, mass, and weight requirements that these navigation solutions entail (Niemoeller et al., 2022). As an alternative, existing Lunar science and exploration assets could be used to create a low-cost, autonomous, ad-hoc, and on-demand mission-centric Lunar PNT swarm capable of providing PNT services to these low-cost lunar missions (Hagenau et al., 2021). Introducing the non-dedicated and ad-hoc Lunar navigation constellation gives a way to provide PNT services on-demand. The non-dedicated swarm assets of Lunar constellations are designed to localize themselves with minimal interaction with Earth by adding cooperative autonomous localization to lunar missions, freeing up valuable bandwidth and ground segment resources. An autonomous localization of Lunar constellations is based on the concept of the decentralized PNT system with a distributed extended Kalman filter (DEKF) approach to state estimation for minimal onboard operating costs. In the distributed data processing algorithm, computation is broken down and assigned to each satellite, resulting in a considerably decreased computational amount while maintaining the accuracy of the orbit ephemeris and clock offsets as the result of centralized data processing (Wen et al., 2019). The DEKF requires spacecraft to perform two-way ranging operations with each other to communicate simultaneously, leveraging neighbor two-way intersatellite link (ISL) measurements such as pseudoranges to, and relative velocities between, visible satellites as sensor values (Frank et al., 2021). The Lunar autonomous PNT simulation (LAPS) demonstrated the feasibility of orbital asset localization among ad-hoc Lunar small-sat constellations based on the DEKF in Hagenau et al. (2021) and evaluated the matching algorithm proposed by Frank et al. (2021) in scheduling position estimation updates. In previous papers, all assets and measurements are assumed to be always available without consideration of the impact of intermittent and permanent communication failure. This study presents localization performance with increasing levels of network degradation for swarm assets and users to demonstrate the robustness of the decentralized Lunar PNT service in more realistic scenarios. Main issues arising from communication failure include spacecraft permanent or transient loss, antenna failures, message delays, etc. We tested four possible reasons for network degradation for 7 days in 21 satellites frozen with an altitude of 5500 km, evenly spaced around 3 circular, 40 inclination orbital planes where each spacecraft has two directional antennas. As anchor nodes with an independent estimate of their position are required in the DEKF approach, two ground nodes in each pole and one node in the gateway were implemented in the simulation. First, the most probable failure scenario involves the loss of a single spacecraft due to solar interference and technical malfunctions of the assets. Losing the availability of a single spacecraft means losing the two-way ISL measurement of the asset in the DEKF update. In order to provide the best possible quality of PNT service with limited time and resources, the distributed Lunar constellations must schedule the communication activities. The scheduler leverages mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) for the coordination and scheduling of the desired “as-needed” localization service (Niemoeller et al., 2022). We assume the scheduler has completely excluded the spacecraft information before the DEKF update in the failure scenario. When a random spacecraft has been turned off at a specific time, the robustness of the autonomous Lunar PNT system is evaluated. The simulation results give an 11.5% degradation in median position accuracy compared to the idealized performance excluding the asset loss. Second, a large number of assets may vanish due to major hardware problems or meteor strikes around the moon. A multiple spacecraft loss can degrade the localization performance very fast by losing the communication ability to do cross-plane measurements and in-plane measurements in a 3-plane constellation. When the matching-based scheduler is aware of ISL availability, we investigate a large number of in-plane and cross-plane asset vanishments both in close proximity and equally spaced throughout the orbital plane. According to the simulations, the loss of in-plane measurements gives 40.2% degradation while cross-plane measurements degrade 50.5% of asset localization performance among available assets. Therefore, it is concluded that cross-plane measurements are more important in improving the position estimation accuracy. Third, spacecraft failure information can be lost due to the internal message delay, resulting in the DEKF update scheduler to solve the matching problem with unavailable assets. The DEKF update cycle is comprised of network setup, communication, and computations where a global broadcast network and a 2-way ISL network setup take 6 minutes in total (Frank et al., 2021). Once the broadcast network successfully transmits and receives information, a random spacecraft may lose its availability right before solving the matching problem. This means the matching solution is no longer optimal, resulting in degradation in the localization performance. A numerical assessment shows the matching-based scheduler with knowing failure holds 11.5% of position accuracy degradation, whereas the scheduler without knowing failure gives 34% degraded localization performance without asset loss. Fourth, a transient loss of a single or multiple spacecraft may occur due to their antenna outages. After losing the two-way ISL availability for a few DEKF update cycles, the availability of spacecraft can easily be recovered as their states have been independently updated using measurements from anchor nodes. It is likely that the longer failure will result in worse localization performance. We have tested the transient failure of a random single asset for 30 min in the simulation, which is losing 3 update cycles in the DEKF system. From the simulation results, the position accuracy has been degraded to 4.84% which is better than the degraded localization performance of 11.5% from the permanent loss scenario among available assets. In conclusion, the autonomous Lunar PNT system based on the DEKF approach shows the ability to maintain resilience and robustness in the possible communication failure scenarios, ensuring that localization accuracy is preserved across various network degradation and outages. Future studies on investigating user localization performance near the South Pole and the broadcast network system will be continued in the following months.
Yeji Kim↗
Localization of Ad-Hoc Lunar Constellations in Communication Failure Modes for Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy
As Lunar missions increase in complexity, inspired by NASA’s Artemis Program, they will require reliable and sufficient Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) capability to support the upcoming Lunar users. The navigation service should also be compatible with the smaller platforms, like CubeSats, being sent by the public and private sectors. A non-dedicated, ad-hoc Lunar navigation constellation can provide PNT services on-demand using the non-dedicated swarm assets. Swarm members cooperatively and autonomously localize themselves with minimal interaction from Earth, freeing up valuable bandwidth and ground segment resources. The autonomous localization of Lunar constellations utilizes neighbor two-way intersatellite link (ISL) measurements in a distributed extended Kalman filter (DEKF) system to minimize operating costs. Because the decentralized Lunar PNT system relies on relay communication amongst the agents, network failures or loss of assets among ad-hoc Lunar constellations may impact localization performance. This study presents an evaluation of localization performance under increasing levels of network degradation. A simulation of an ad-hoc Lunar PNT swarm is augmented to include system faults and the impacts of intermittent and permanent failures on localization performance are evaluated. We investigate three potential causes of network degradation: single spacecraft loss, multiple spacecraft loss, and antenna failure. The numerical assessments from the simulation show that the LPNT system under study, based on an autonomous decentralized concept of operation, is highly robust and resilient to communication failures. Minor faults, such as single spacecraft loss, solar interference, technical malfunctions, message delays, and antenna outages, have minimal impact on state estimation, with only a 4.47% and 3.75% degradation in median position error for assets and a representative ground user, respectively, compared to an ideal communication scenario. However, major faults, such as hardware failures or meteor strikes leading to the loss of multiple spacecrafts, are more concerning. The permanent loss of three spacecraft results in a more severe performance degradation, with median position error increasing by 23.3% for assets and 11.7% for a representative ground user, despite the Lunar PNT system remaining functional.
Yeji Kim↗
Onboard autonomy on the Three Corner Sat Mission
Three Corner Sat (3CS) is a mission of three university nanosatellites scheduled for launch on September 2002. The 3CS misison will utilize significan onboard autonomy to perform onboard science data validation and replanning.
scheduling planning resources model based systems↗
Autonomous Mission Manager for Rendezvous, Inspection and Mating
To meet cost and safety objectives, space missions that involve proximity operations between two vehicles require a high level of autonomy to successfully complete their missions. The need for autonomy is primarily driven by the need to conduct complex operations outside of communication windows, and the communication time delays inherent in space missions. Autonomy also supports the goals of both NASA and the DOD to make space operations more routine, and lower operational costs by reducing the requirement for ground personnel. NASA and the DoD have several programs underway that require a much higher level of autonomy for space vehicles. NASA's Space Launch Initiative (SLI) program has ambitious goals of reducing costs by a factor or 10 and improving safety by a factor of 100. DARPA has recently begun its Orbital Express to demonstrate key technologies to make satellite servicing routine. The Air Force's XSS-ll program is developing a protoflight demonstration of an autonomous satellite inspector. A common element in space operations for many NASA and DOD missions is the ability to rendezvous, inspect anclJor dock with another spacecraft. For DARPA, this is required to service or refuel military satellites. For the Air Force, this is required to inspect un-cooperative resident space objects. For NASA, this is needed to meet the primary SLI design reference mission of International Space Station re-supply. A common aspect for each of these programs is an Autonomous Mission Manager that provides highly autonomous planning, execution and monitoring of the rendezvous, inspection and docking operations. This paper provides an overview of the Autonomous Mission Manager (AMM) design being incorporated into many of these technology programs. This AMM provides a highly scalable level of autonomous operations, ranging from automatic execution of ground-derived plans to highly autonomous onboard planning to meet ground developed mission goals. The AMM provides the capability to automatically execute the plans and monitor the system performance. In the event of system dispersions or failures the AMM can modify plans or abort to assure overall system safety. This paper describes the design and functionality of Draper's AMM framework, presents concept of operations associated with the use of the AMM, and outlines the relevant features of the flight demonstrations.
Zimpfer, Douglas J.↗