Activity-Based Scheduling of Science Campaigns for the Rosetta Orbiter

Rosetta is a European Space Agency (ESA) cornerstone mission that entered orbit around the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August 2014 and will escort the comet for a 1.5 year nominal mission offering the most detailed study of a comet ever undertaken by humankind. The Rosetta orbiter has 11 scientific instruments (4 remote sensing) and the Philae lander to make complementary measurements of the comet nucleus, coma (gas and dust), and surrounding environment. The ESA Rosetta Science Ground Segment has developed a science scheduling system that includes an automated scheduling capability to assist in developing science plans for the Rosetta Orbiter. While automated scheduling is a small portion of the overall Science Ground Segment (SGS) as well as the overall scheduling system, this paper focuses on the automated and semi-automated scheduling software (called ASPEN-RSSC) and how this software is used.

[1]  J. A. Tejo,et al.  FlexPlan : An Operational Mission Planning & Scheduling COTS Used Internationally , 2006 .

[2]  Amedeo Cesta,et al.  An Innovative Product for Space Mission Planning: An A Posteriori Evaluation , 2007, ICAPS.

[3]  Benjamin D. Smith,et al.  The RADARSAT-MAMM Automated Mission Planner , 2001, AI Mag..

[4]  Emmanuel Hebrard,et al.  Scheduling Scientific Experiments on the Rosetta/Philae Mission , 2012, CP.

[5]  M. N. England,et al.  The Evolution of the FUSE Spike Long Range Planning System , 2004 .

[6]  Daniel Tran,et al.  Automated and Adaptive Mission Planning for Orbital Express , 2008 .

[7]  George Kosugi,et al.  Observation scheduling tools for Subaru Telescope , 2004, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[8]  M. Johnston,et al.  S PIKE : Intelligent Scheduling of Hubble Space Telescope Observations , 1994 .

[9]  Mark Perry,et al.  Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space , 1999 .

[10]  Ari K. Jónsson,et al.  Activity Planning for the Mars Exploration Rovers , 2005, ICAPS.

[11]  Steve A. Chien,et al.  Timeline-ased Space Operations Scheduling with External Constraints , 2010 .

[12]  Christoph Lenzen,et al.  A generalized timeline representation, services, and interface for automating space mission operations , 2012, SpaceOps 2012 Conference.

[13]  Alex Fukunaga,et al.  Iterative Repair Planning for Spacecraft Operations Using the Aspen System , 2000 .

[14]  Laurence A. Kramer.  Generating a Long Range Plan for a New Class of Astronomical Observatories , 2000 .

[15]  David R. Thompson,et al.  Onboard Autonomy on the Intelligent Payload EXperiment (IPEX) Cubesat Mission: A pathfinder for the proposed HyspIRI Mission Intelligent Payload Module , 2014 .

[16]  Christoph Lenzen,et al.  TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X Mission Planning Handling Satellites in Close Formation , 2010 .