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Agent Based Software for the Autonomous Control of Formation Flying SpacecraftDistributed satellite systems is an enabling technology for many future NASA/DoD earth and space science missions, such as MMS, MAXIM, Leonardo, and LISA [1, 2, 3]. While formation flying offers significant science benefits, to reduce the operating costs for these missions it will be essential that these multiple vehicles effectively act as a single spacecraft by performing coordinated observations. Autonomous guidance, navigation, and control as part of a coordinated fleet-autonomy is a key technology that will help accomplish this complex goal. This is no small task, as most current space missions require significant input from the ground for even relatively simple decisions such as thruster burns. Work for the NMP DS1 mission focused on the development of the New Millennium Remote Agent (NMRA) architecture for autonomous spacecraft control systems. NMRA integrates traditional real-time monitoring and control with components for constraint-based planning, robust multi-threaded execution, and model-based diagnosis and reconfiguration. The complexity of using an autonomous approach for space flight software was evident when most of its capabilities were stripped off prior to launch (although more capability was uplinked subsequently, and the resulting demonstration was very successful).
Document ID
20030018262
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Contractor or Grantee Report
Authors
How, Jonathan P.
(Massachusetts Inst. of Tech. Cambridge, MA United States)
Campbell, Mark
(Massachusetts Inst. of Tech. Cambridge, MA United States)
Dennehy, Neil
Date Acquired
September 7, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2003
Subject Category
Spacecraft Design, Testing And Performance
Report/Patent Number
MIT-OSP-6891850
Report Number: MIT-OSP-6891850
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NAG5-10440
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.
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