Automating Mid- and Long-Range Scheduling for the NASA Deep Space Network

NASA has recently deployed a new mid-range scheduling system for the antennas of the Deep Space Network (DSN), called Service Scheduling Software, or S(sup 3). This system was designed and deployed as a modern web application containing a central scheduling database integrated with a collaborative environment, exploiting the same technologies as social web applications but applied to a space operations context. This is highly relevant to the DSN domain since the network schedule of operations is developed in a peer-to-peer negotiation process among all users of the DSN. These users represent not only NASA's deep space missions, but also international partners and ground-based science and calibration users. The initial implementation of S(sup 3) is complete and the system has been operational since July 2011. This paper describes some key aspects of the S(sup 3) system and on the challenges of modeling complex scheduling requirements and the ongoing extension of S(sup 3) to encompass long-range planning, downtime analysis, and forecasting, as the next step in developing a single integrated DSN scheduling tool suite to cover all time ranges.