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Description:
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The development of onboard autonomy capability is the key to a set of vastly important strategic technical challenges facing NASA: increased efficiency in the return of quality science products, reduction of mission costs, and the launching of a new era of solar system exploration characterized by sustained presence, in-situ science investigations and missions accomplished via multiple, coordinated space platforms. Autonomy is a central capability for enabling missions that inherently must be accomplished without the benefit of ongoing ground support. This constraint may arise due to control challenges, e.g., small-body rendezvous and precision landing, or may arise due to mission planning challenges based in the difficulty of modeling the planetary environment coupled with the difficulty or impossibility of communications during critical or extended periods. A sophisticated Mars rover, a comet lander, a Europan under-ice explorer, and a Titan aerobot are examples of missions, some unprecedented, which typify these challenges. This paper describes the set of NASA missions that aim to utilize autonomy and recent developments in the creation of space platform autonomy capabilities at NASA.
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