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NASA NTRS2018

Cassini's Grand Finale: A Mission Planning Retrospective

On September 15, 2017, Cassini plunged deep into Saturn, down to where the atmosphere was sufficiently dense to destroy the spacecraft, making it part of Saturn forever. In the five months leading up to its destruction, Cassini flew between Saturn and its rings 22 times, collecting data from the never before-explored region of the Kronian system. These orbits, the Grand Finale of Cassini, were the culmination of years of planning by the Cassini flight team. This paper looks back upon the mission planning effort in particular, comparing the baseline operational scenarios and contingency plans to the as flown Grand Finale. The bulk of the Grand Finale mission planning effort was focused on the environmental hazards present in the region between Saturn and its rings: the dust and the atmosphere. Dust hazard and atmospheric transit contingency plans were in place to help ensure spacecraft health and maximize science data return. The dust hazard plan gave the operations team the option to turn the spacecraft to a safe attitude during ring-plane crossings had the dust environment proved more threatening than anticipated. The atmospheric transit plan would have made use of an orbital trim maneuver in order to raise or lower periapsis depending on the density of the atmosphere. The proximal environment did have its surprises, though they were good surprises. The dust was significantly less hazardous than predicted. So much so that elements of the contingency plan were leveraged in order to remove a dust hazard protection from the baseline plan, rather than add one to it. While the atmosphere was substantially denser than predicted, it was not dense enough to warrant a periapsis-raise maneuver and actually meant that better in-situ data was gathered. Ultimately, from a mission planning perspective, the Grand Finale went better than expected.

Sturm II, Erick J.↗

NASA NTRS2017

NASA's Current Initiative to Improve Operations Planning

As a follow-on to the Technical Capability Assessment Team, in 2015 NASA began seven Agency-wide efforts to seek out opportunities to improve the effectiveness of NASA operations. One of these technical teams is the Mission Operations Planning team, charged with increasing interactions and efficiency for planning of mission activities. That team is chaired by the author with representatives from eight other centers across the Agency. As the strategic architects for the vision of agency-wide ops planning, the team has identified a number of new initiatives and techniques to improve planning, including: breaking down walls within centers which obstruct multi-mission planning; breaking down walls agency-wide which obstruct the sharing of ops planning lessons and capabilities; strengthening the community of practice of ops planning capability developers; establishing best practices for a variety of types of ops planning; defining standards for activity plans and timelines, and plan inputs; and recommending the presence of "multi-mission operations champions" within each center to implement these recommendations into the next decade.

Seal, David↗

NASA NTRS2022

COCPIT: Collaborative Activity Planning Software for Mars Perseverance Rover

Since landing on the Martian surface, the Perseverance rover has relied on a distributed team to generate commands for exploring its new environment each sol (Martian day). The team uses a complex suite of software tools to accomplish this challenging task in time for the next window of opportunity to send commands to the rover. A key piece of this software ecosystem is COCPIT (Component-based Campaign Planning, Implementation, and Tactical). COCPIT is part of the next generation of planning and scheduling software tools developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in partnership with NASA's Ames Research Center. COCPIT is a web-based application that allows users to collaboratively view and update the Perseverance rover's activity plans, continuously verify that the plan satisfies constraints, assign targets for directing scientific instruments, document science intent, and model power and data resources. Mars Surface Operations requires diverse expertise from team members within the Engineering, Science, Robotic, and Instrument Operations groups, distributed across North America and Europe. In order to improve efficiency and reduce risk, all teams are able to review and edit their activities simultaneously and see the effects on the plan in its entirety. As part of the Ground Data System (GDS) tool suite, COCPIT is responsible for the activity plan. It provides specialized views that allow operators to understand where there may be room for additional observations, see whether any planning constraints are being violated, and confirm that energy usage and data generation are within the defined limits. It contains details such as which filters a camera will use for a given observation, what the resolution of the images should be, where to store the data onboard, and how long the observation is expected to take. It predicts when specific data will be downlinked from the rover to a passing orbiter, so that the team knows when to expect that data on Earth for evaluation in future planning. Ultimately the information from the COCPIT plan is translated to sequences that will be bundled and radiated to Perseverance for execution. The COCPIT tool is used throughout all planning phases.

Kanefsky, Bob↗

NASA NTRS1976

Payload crew activity planning integration. Task 2: Inflight operations and training for payloads

The primary objectives of the Payload Crew Activity Planning Integration task were to: (1) Determine feasible, cost-effective payload crew activity planning integration methods. (2) Develop an implementation plan and guidelines for payload crew activity plan (CAP) integration between the JSC Orbiter planners and the Payload Centers. Subtask objectives and study activities were defined as: (1) Determine Crew Activity Planning Interfaces. (2) Determine Crew Activity Plan Type and Content. (3) Evaluate Automated Scheduling Tools. (4) Develop a draft Implementation Plan for Crew Activity Planning Integration. The basic guidelines were to develop a plan applicable to the Shuttle operations timeframe, utilize existing center resources and expertise as much as possible, and minimize unnecessary data exchange not directly productive in the development of the end-product timelines.

Hitz, F. R.↗

NASA NTRS1979

The requirements and feasibility of business planning in the office of space and terrestrial applications

The feasibility of applying strategic business planning techniques which are developed and used in the private sector to the planning of certain projects within the NASA Office of Space and Terrestrial Applications was assessed. The methods of strategic business planning that are currently in use in the private sector are examined. The typical contents of a private sector strategic business plan and the techniques commonly used to develop the contents of the plan are described, along with modifications needed to apply these concepts to public sector projects. The current long-range planning process in the Office of Space and Terrestrial Applications is reviewed and program initiatives that might be candidates for the use of strategic business planning techniques are identified. In order to more fully illustrate the information requirements of a strategic business plan for a NASA program, a sample business plan is prepared for a hypothetical Operational Earth Resources Satellite program.

Greenberg, J. S.↗

NASA NTRS1987

The Mission Operations Planning Assistant

The Mission Operations Planning Assistant (MOPA) is a knowledge-based system developed to support the planning and scheduling of instrument activities on the Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite (UARS). The MOPA system represents and maintains instrument plans at two levels of abstraction in order to keep plans comprehensible to both UARS Principal Investigators and Command Management personnel. The hierarchical representation of plans also allows MOPA to automatically create detailed instrument activity plans from which spacecraft command loads may be generated. The MOPA system was developed on a Symbolics 3640 computer using the ZetaLisp and ART languages. MOPA's features include a textual and graphical interface for plan inspection and modification, recognition of instrument operational constraint violations during the planning process, and consistency maintenance between the different planning levels. This paper describes the current MOPA system.

Schuetzle, James G.↗

NASA NTRS1987

The mission operations planning assistant

The Mission Operations Planning Assistant (MOPA) is a knowledge-based system developed to support the planning and scheduling of instrument activities on the Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite (UARS). The MOPA system represents and maintains instrument plans at two levels of abstraction in order to keep plans comprehensible to both UARS Prinicpal Investigators and Command Management personnel. The hierarchical representation of plans also allows MOPA to automatically create detailed instrument activity plans from which spacecraft command loads may be generated. The MOPA system was developed on a Symbolics 3640 computer using the ZETALISP and ART languages. MOPA's features include a textual and graphical interface for plan inspection and modification, recognition of instrument operational constraint violations during the planning process, and consistency maintenance between the different planning levels. This paper describes the current MOPA system.

Schuetzle, James G.↗

NASA NTRS1990

The Office of Space Science and Applications strategic plan, 1990: A strategy for leadership in space through excellence in space science and applications

A strategic plan for the U.S. space science and applications program during the next 5 to 10 years was developed and published in 1988. Based on the strategies developed by the advisory committees of both the National Academy of Science and NASA, the plan balances major, moderate, and small mission initiatives, the utilization of the Space Station Freedom, and the requirements for a vital research base. The Office of Space Science and Applications (OSSA) strategic plan is constructed around five actions: establish a set of programmatic themes; establish a set of decision rules; establish a set of priorities for missions and programs within each theme; demonstrate that the strategy will yield a viable program; and check the strategy for consistency within resource constraints. The OSSA plan is revised annually. This OSSA 1990 Strategic Plan refines the 1989 Plan and represents OSSA's initial plan for fulfilling its responsibilities in two major national initiatives. The Plan is now built on interrelated, complementary strategies for the core space science and applications program, for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and for the Space Exploration Initiative. The challenge is to make sure that the current level of activity is sustained through the end of this century and into the next. The 1990 Plan presents OSSA's strategy to do this.

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NASA NTRS1991

Integrated Technology Plan for the Civil Space Program, 1991

The purpose of the Integrated Technology Plan (ITP) is to serve as a strategic plan for the OAST space research and technology (R&T) program, and as a strategic planning framework for other NASA and national participants in advocating and conducting technology developments that support future U.S. civil space missions. The ITP begins with a discussion of the national policy and NASA organization which establishes the overall framework for civil space R&T planning. The second chapter provides a top-level review of the potential users of civil space R&T, their strategic mission plans, and the technologies they have identified as needed to achieve those plans. The overall methodology used to develop a civil space technology strategy is discussed. The technical details of the 1991 strategic plan are described, ending with a review of civil space R&T priorities. The fourth chapter describes how the strategic plan is annually translated into the OAST Space R&T Program, with a summary of the fiscal year 1992 program. The ITP concludes with a discussion of requirements for technology development coordination and strategies for facilitating the transfer of civil space technology to the private sector. Several appendices also are attached that provide further information regarding budget implications of the strategic plan, organizational roles, and other topics.

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NASA NTRS1992

Backward assembly planning with DFA analysis

An assembly planning system that operates based on a recursive decomposition of assembly into subassemblies is presented. The planning system analyzes assembly cost in terms of stability, directionality, and manipulability to guide the generation of preferred assembly plans. The planning in this system incorporates the special processes, such as cleaning, testing, labeling, etc., that must occur during the assembly. Additionally, the planning handles nonreversible, as well as reversible, assembly tasks through backward assembly planning. In order to decrease the planning efficiency, the system avoids the analysis of decompositions that do not correspond to feasible assembly tasks. This is achieved by grouping and merging those parts that can not be decomposable at the current stage of backward assembly planning due to the requirement of special processes and the constraint of interconnection feasibility. The invention includes methods of evaluating assembly cost in terms of the number of fixtures (or holding devices) and reorientations required for assembly, through the analysis of stability, directionality, and manipulability. All these factors are used in defining cost and heuristic functions for an AO* search for an optimal plan.

Lee, Sukhan↗

NASA NTRS1992

Multi-agent planning and scheduling, execution monitoring and incremental rescheduling: Application to motorway traffic

This article describes a planning method applicable to agents with great perception and decision-making capabilities and the ability to communicate with other agents. Each agent has a task to fulfill allowing for the actions of other agents in its vicinity. Certain simultaneous actions may cause conflicts because they require the same resource. The agent plans each of its actions and simultaneously transmits these to its neighbors. In a similar way, it receives plans from the other agents and must take account of these plans. The planning method allows us to build a distributed scheduling system. Here, these agents are robot vehicles on a highway communicating by radio. In this environment, conflicts between agents concern the allocation of space in time and are connected with the inertia of the vehicles. Each vehicle made a temporal, spatial, and situated reasoning in order to drive without collision. The flexibility and reactivity of the method presented here allows the agent to generate its plan based on assumptions concerning the other agents and then check these assumptions progressively as plans are received from the other agents. A multi-agent execution monitoring of these plans can be done, using data generated during planning and the multi-agent decision-making algorithm described here. A selective backtrack allows us to perform incremental rescheduling.

Mourou, Pascal↗

NASA NTRS1998

Hybrid Motion Planning with Multiple Destinations

In our initial proposal, we laid plans for developing a hybrid motion planning system that combines the concepts of visibility-based motion planning, artificial potential field based motion planning, evolutionary constrained optimization, and reinforcement learning. Our goal was, and still is, to produce a hybrid motion planning system that outperforms the best traditional motion planning systems on problems with dynamic environments. The proposed hybrid system will be in two parts the first is a global motion planning system and the second is a local motion planning system. The global system will take global information about the environment, such as the placement of the obstacles and goals, and produce feasible paths through those obstacles. We envision a system that combines the evolutionary-based optimization and visibility-based motion planning to achieve this end.

Clouse, Jeffery↗

NASA NTRS2012

Development of Waypoint Planning Tool in Response to NASA Field Campaign Challenges

Airborne real time observations are a major component of NASA 's Earth Science research and satellite ground validation studies. Multiple aircraft are involved in most NASA field campaigns. The coordination of the aircraft with satellite overpasses, other airplanes and the constantly evolving, dynamic weather conditions often determines the success of the campaign. Planning a research aircraft mission within the context of meeting the science objectives is a complex task because it requires real time situational awareness of the weather conditions that affect the aircraft track. A flight planning tools is needed to provide situational awareness information to the mission scientists, and help them plan and modify the flight tracks. Scientists at the University of Alabama ]Huntsville and the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center developed the Waypoint Planning Tool, an interactive software tool that enables scientists to develop their own flight plans (also known as waypoints) with point -and-click mouse capabilities on a digital map filled with real time raster and vector data. The development of this Waypoint Planning Tool demonstrates the significance of mission support in responding to the challenges presented during NASA field campaigns. Analysis during and after each campaign helped identify both issues and new requirements, and initiated the next wave of development. Currently the Waypoint Planning Tool has gone through three rounds of development and analysis processes. The development of this waypoint tool is directly affected by the technology advances on GIS/Mapping technologies. From the standalone Google Earth application and simple KML functionalities, to Google Earth Plugin on web platform, and to the rising open source GIS tools with New Java Script frameworks, the Waypoint Planning Tool has entered its third phase of technology advancement. Adapting new technologies for the Waypoint Planning Tool ensures its success in helping scientist reach their mission objectives.

He, Matt↗

NASA NTRS2013

Review of the Draft 2014 Science Mission Directorate Science Plan

At the request of NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD), the National Research Council's (NRC's) Space Studies Board (SSB) initiated a study to review a draft of the SMD's 2014 Science Plan. The request for this review was made at a time when NASA is engaged in the final stages of a comprehensive, agency-wide effort to develop a new strategic plan and at a time when NASA's budget is under considerable stress. SMD's Science Plan serves to provide more detail on its four traditional science disciplines-astronomy and astrophysics, solar and space physics (also called heliophysics), planetary science, and Earth remote sensing and related activities-than is possible in the agency-wide Strategic Plan. In conducting its review of the draft Science Plan, the Committee on the Assessment of the NASA Science Mission Directorate 2014 Science Plan was charged to comment on the following specific areas: (1) Responsiveness to the NRC's guidance on key science issues and opportunities in recent NRC reports; (2) Attention to interdisciplinary aspects and overall scientific balance; (3) Identification and exposition of important opportunities for partnerships as well as education and public outreach; (4) Integration of technology development with the science program; (5) Clarity on how the plan aligns with SMD's strategic planning process; (6) General readability and clarity of presentation; and (7) Other relevant issues as determined by the committee. The main body of the report provides detailed findings and recommendations relating to the draft Science Plan. The highest-level, crosscutting issues are summarized here, and more detail is available in the main body of the report.

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NASA NTRS2008

Automated and Adaptive Mission Planning for Orbital Express

The Orbital Express space mission was a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) lead demonstration of on-orbit satellite servicing scenarios, autonomous rendezvous, fluid transfers of hydrazine propellant, and robotic arm transfers of Orbital Replacement Unit (ORU) components. Boeing's Autonomous Space Transport Robotic Operations (ASTRO) vehicle provided the servicing to the Ball Aerospace's Next Generation Serviceable Satellite (NextSat) client. For communication opportunities, operations used the high-bandwidth ground-based Air Force Satellite Control Network (AFSCN) along with the relatively low-bandwidth GEO-Synchronous space-borne Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) network. Mission operations were conducted out of the RDT&E Support Complex (RSC) at the Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. All mission objectives were met successfully: The first of several autonomous rendezvous was demonstrated on May 5, 2007; autonomous free-flyer capture was demonstrated on June 22, 2007; the fluid and ORU transfers throughout the mission were successful. Planning operations for the mission were conducted by a team of personnel including Flight Directors, who were responsible for verifying the steps and contacts within the procedures, the Rendezvous Planners who would compute the locations and visibilities of the spacecraft, the Scenario Resource Planners (SRPs), who were concerned with assignment of communications windows, monitoring of resources, and sending commands to the ASTRO spacecraft, and the Mission planners who would interface with the real-time operations environment, process planning products and coordinate activities with the SRP. The SRP position was staffed by JPL personnel who used the Automated Scheduling and Planning ENvironment (ASPEN) to model and enforce mission and satellite constraints. The lifecycle of a plan began three weeks outside its execution on-board. During the planning timeframe, many aspects could change the plan, causing the need for re-planning. These variable factors, ranging from shifting contact times to ground-station closures and required maintenance times, are discussed along with the flexibility of the ASPEN tool to accommodate changes to procedures and the daily or long-range plan, which contributed to the success of the mission. This paper will present an introduction to ASPEN, a more in-depth discussion on its use on the Orbital Express mission, and other relative work. A description of ground operations after the SRP deliveries were made is included, and we briefly discuss lessons learned from the planning perspective and future work.

scheduling↗

NASA NTRS2018

Innovative Development of a Cross-Center Timeline Planning Tool

The Payload Operations Integration Center (POIC) at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) supports planning, coordination and scheduling of science activities for the International Space Station (ISS) in coordination with other NASA centers, international partners, and payload developers. The ability to efficiently plan and re-plan in response to change is critical to the flight planning teams. With the achievement of supporting a fourth crew member aboard the ISS and an increasing amount of payload science activities, came the need for a dynamic, more efficient way of building timeline planning reports that could be readily updated as fast as payload science plans could change. This paper addresses software architecture considerations in the successful cross-center development of an automated planning tool with multiple data sources. It also discusses the practical implementation of a time-boxed, hybrid Agile Software Development (ASD) approach to deliver customer-driven value despite changing requirements with respect to low-Earth orbit operational planning activities. The goal of this paper is to open discussion with members of the international community and trade effective strategies for cross-center architectural and customer-developer driven collaborations, to support increasing utilization of planning and conducting science activities in space.

Pedoto, Ramon W.↗

NASA NTRS2022

The Psyche Planning Software Subsystem: Creating a Robust Toolset for a Discovery-class Mission

Psyche is a Discovery-class mission to the small metal-rich asteroid (16) Psyche, and is slated to launch in 2022. Psyche, like many missions, requires low-cost activity planning and sequence generation that serves as the backbone to overall uplink design. Such tools must be maintainable over long periods of operations, and powerful enough to solve complex issues that deep-space one-off missions encounter. In this paper we introduce cost-effective solutions that leverage inner- and open-source principles to meet a variety of common and novel use cases.The uplink process that was designed to meet these challenges is presented, as well as the data-flow through the high-level architecture of the planning software subsystem. The user-facing planning tools are described, particularly the Science Opportunity Analyzer, the Plan Editor, Psyche’s planning automation in the Blackbird framework, and Psyche Simulation Reports. All these applications are either new or have been substantially revamped to meet Psyche’s concept of operations. In particular, ensuring the entire toolchain can correctly process epoch-relative activities is discussed. Underlying the main applications are a common set of dependencies developed and maintained by a new cross-mission association of planning developers. In this way, Psyche can inherit well-tested functionality which saves effort and ensures its developers can focus on solving domain challenges. Quality control of the applications and libraries is ensured with a code-review and unit-test based novel ‘CM lite’ process. Collaboration with international industry and academia using the open-source modules is already occurring.The planning and scheduling software is designed to maximize operator awareness of the integrated plan at every step of the process and use common interfaces and file formats to easily transfer information. Design choices plus the team’s test-driven development process enables more expansive capabilities compared to the decentralized planning and sequence generation functions typical of Discovery-class orbiters without significant development cost increases. Benefits and drawbacks of Psyche’s approach are discussed, including comparison to other missions and tools where appropriate.

Ramanathan, Keshav↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Enhancing Air Traffic Control Planning with Automatic Speech Recognition

The decisions made during the Federal Aviation Administration Air Traffic Control System Command Center's planning teleconferences hold significant sway over the National Airspace System. Held every two hours, these teleconferences convene air traffic managers and stakeholders from across the nation to discuss airspace conditions, weather, and constraints, leading to the formulation and adjustment of traffic management initiatives. Given the critical nature of these decisions, the need for accurate and efficient record-keeping is paramount. In recent years, the application of automatic speech recognition has gained popularity across diverse industries, including aviation. While traditional applications focus on transcribing air traffic control communication, this paper explores a unique application of automatic speech recognition by converting the audio from planning teleconferences into text transcriptions. This innovative approach addresses key challenges in the field, presenting potential benefits for quality assurance, real-time participation, and downstream natural language processing tasks. A notable breakthrough in the machine learning community, namely the transformer neural network architecture, forms the backbone of the proposed solution in this paper. The transformer architecture's role in this research represents a paradigm shift in the efficiency of automatic speech recognition models. By reducing the amount of in-domain training data required, this architecture allows for the fine-tuning of such models like Whisper, originally pretrained on vast English speech datasets. The adaptability of the transformer architecture proves invaluable in capturing the nuances of aviation terminology and specific language used in planning teleconferences. Leveraging the Whisper model as a baseline, our research details the fine-tuning and validation using a dataset comprising 20 hours of meticulously transcribed planning teleconferences. Notably, the baseline pretrained Whisper model exhibited a word error rate of 18.77%. Through the fine-tuning process, the model achieved a substantial improvement, demonstrating an impressive performance with a reduced word error rate of 6.82%. This substantial decrease in WER not only highlights the effectiveness of the transformer architecture but also emphasizes the practical advancements achieved through the application of automatic speech recognition in this specific domain. The utilization of automatic speech recognition in planning teleconferences in this work introduces several novelties. Firstly, the creation of text transcriptions offers a valuable tool for quality assurance and facilitates the efficient review of teleconferences. This is an important aspect of the proposed solution, given the time-sensitive and high-stakes nature of decisions made during these meetings. Furthermore, text-searchable transcriptions provide a streamlined approach for locating and validating critical information, potentially saving hours of manual effort in searching through audio recordings. Moreover, our research identifies a key use case for external facilities and stakeholders. In situations where attendance at the planning teleconference is not feasible, having access to text transcriptions in real-time or shortly after the teleconference ends, proves to be a time-saving and informative resource. This feature enhances collaboration and ensures that stakeholders can stay abreast of important discussions and decisions even in their absence. Despite the efficiency gains facilitated by the transformer architecture in automatic speech recognition technology, it is essential to acknowledge the human factors in data creation. Subject matter experts play a crucial role in accurately transcribing planning teleconferences due to the specificity and complexity of the information discussed. The research dataset, consisting of 20 hours of transcribed planning teleconferences, forms the foundation for fine-tuning and validating the Whisper model. The achieved word error rate of 6.82% demonstrates promising advancements, particularly in recognizing essential aviation terminology within the teleconferences. In conclusion, this paper presents a comprehensive exploration of the application of automatic speech recognition in Air Traffic Control System Command Center planning teleconferences, leveraging the transformer architecture for enhanced efficiency. The novel contributions lie in the improved accessibility of decision-making records, real-time participation opportunities for external stakeholders, and the potential for downstream natural language processing advancements. As the aviation industry continues to evolve, the integration of automatic speech recognition technologies holds the promise of revolutionizing decision-making processes and contributing to the overall safety and efficiency of air traffic management.

ATM↗