Scheduling NASA's Deep Space Network: Priorities, Preferences, and Optimization

NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) is the primary resource for communications and navigation for interplanetary space missions, for both NASA and partner agencies. Growth in mission demand, both in number of spacecraft and in data return, has led to increased loading levels on the network, and actual demand frequently exceeds network capacity. The DSN scheduling process involves peer-to-peer collaborative negotiation, which consumes significant time and resources in order to reach a baseline version of the schedule, and then to manage and agree to changes. Process delays are exacerbated by the high level of oversubscription experienced by the DSN: it is not unusual for the scheduling process to start with 20-40\% more requested time can be accommodated on the available antennas. The other NASA networks make use of a static mission priority list to address a similar problem: missions are ranked in priority order, then the schedule is populated by priority from highest to lowest. Such a mechanism would not work for DSN due to the heterogeneity of the mission set, and to the time-varying mission requirements with mission phase. This paper describes an alternative approach for the DSN that addresses key problems inherent in the current process --- oversubsubscription and how to "fairly'" reduce it to a manageable level. The main characteristics of the new approach are the use of loading-based limits based on balancing requested time, along with priorities and user preferences as the basis for optimization criteria that can be used by new algorithms.