Orbital Express mission operations planning and resource management using ASPEN

Caroline Chouinard; Russell Knight; Grailing Jones; Daniel Tran

doi:10.1117/12.782454

15 April 2008 Orbital Express mission operations planning and resource management using ASPEN

Caroline Chouinard, Russell Knight, Grailing Jones, Daniel Tran

Proceedings Volume 6958, Sensors and Systems for Space Applications II; 695806 (2008) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.782454
Event: SPIE Defense and Security Symposium, 2008, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

As satellite equipment and mission operations become more costly, the drive to keep working equipment running with less labor-power rises. Demonstrating the feasibility of autonomous satellite servicing was the main goal behind the Orbital Express (OE) mission. Like a tow-truck delivering gas to a car on the road, the "servicing" satellite of OE had to find the "client" from several kilometers away, connect directly to the client, and transfer fluid (or a battery) autonomously, while on earth-orbit. The mission met 100% of its success criteria, and proved that autonomous satellite servicing is now a reality for space operations. Planning the satellite mission operations for OE required the ability to create a plan which could be executed autonomously over variable conditions. As the constraints for execution could change weekly, daily, and even hourly, the tools used create the mission execution plans needed to be flexible and adaptable to many different kinds of changes. At the same time, the hard constraints of the plans needed to be maintained and satisfied. The Automated Scheduling and Planning Environment (ASPEN) tool, developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was used to create the schedule of events in each daily plan for the two satellites of the OE mission. This paper presents an introduction to the ASPEN tool, an overview of the constraints of the OE domain, the variable conditions that were presented within the mission, and the solution to operations that ASPEN provided. ASPEN has been used in several other domains, including research rovers, Deep Space Network scheduling research, and in flight operations for the NASA's Earth Observing One mission's EO1 satellite. Related work is discussed, as are the future of ASPEN and the future of autonomous satellite servicing.

Citation Download Citation

Caroline Chouinard, Russell Knight, Grailing Jones, and Daniel Tran "Orbital Express mission operations planning and resource management using ASPEN", Proc. SPIE 6958, Sensors and Systems for Space Applications II, 695806 (15 April 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.782454

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