A Constraint-Based Planner for Mars Express Orbiter

The Mars Express mission is a space exploration mission being conducted by the European Space Agency. The Mars Express Orbiter is extremely successful and is performing scientific experiments since early 2004, generating 2-3Gbit of scientific data per day. It is therefore very important to plan its activities properly to obtain high-quality scientific data outcome. The paper describes a complete constraint-based automated planner of the Mars Express Orbiter activities covering uploading tele-commands, experiments and maintenance activities, and downloading data back to Earth.