Rapid Turnaround of Costing/Designing of Space Missions Operations

The Ground Segment Team (GST), at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, provides high-level mission operations concepts and cost estimates for projects that are in the formulation phase. GST has developed a tool to track costs, assumptions, and mission requirements, and to rapidly turnaround estimates for mission operations, ground data systems, and tracking for deep space and near Earth missions. Estimates that would often take several weeks to generate are now generated in minutes through the use of an integrated suite of cost models. The models were developed through interviews with domain experts in areas of Mission Operations, including but not limited to: systems engineering, payload operations, tracking resources, mission planning, navigation, telemetry and command, and ground network infrastructure. Data collected during interviews were converted into parametric cost models and integrated into one tool suite. The tool has been used on a wide range of missions from small Earth orbiters, to flagship missions like Cassini. The tool is an aid to project managers and mission planners as they consider different scenarios during the proposal and early development stages of their missions. The tool is also used for gathering cost related requirements and assumptions and for conducting integrated analysis of multiple missions.