An Onboard Autonomous Response Prototype for an Earth Observing Spacecraft. Chien, S., Knight, R., Schaffer, S., Thompson, D. R., Bue, B., & Troesch, M. In International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence Workshop on Artificial Intelligence in Space (AI Space, IJCAI 2015), Buenos Aires, Argentina, July, 2015.
An Onboard Autonomous Response Prototype for an Earth Observing Spacecraft [pdf]Paper  abstract   bibtex   
Prior space missions have not routinely used onboard decision-making. The Autonomous Sciencecraft (ASE), flying onboard the Earth Observing One spacecraft, has been flying autonomous agent software for the last decade that enables it to analyze acquired imagery on board and use that analysis to determine future imaging. However ASE takes approximately one hour to analyze and respond. This paper describes the Earth Observing Autonomy (EOA) project to increase the responsiveness of spacecraft flight software for onboard decision-making as well as to increase the capabilities such flight software. We describe prototype flight software that simulates acquisition of imagery, onboard spectral analysis of the imagery, replanning of imaging to include re-imaging of detected phenomenon, and then execution of this response imagery - all within this eight minute single overflight including the spacecraft response time (e.g. To re-point the spacecraft, acquire the image, etc.).

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