When plans are executed by mice and men

In human spaceflight mission operations, plans are executed by human flight controllers and crew.¹² Execution of the plan requires initiation of activities, tracking their progress, verifying activity completion status, and determining how to react to unexpected events. The complexity of spaceflight operations requires the integration of information from many different sources to accomplish these tasks, and using many software tools to assist in the plan execution process. This paper provides a survey of the current state of the practice in helping NASA flight controllers execute plans. The paper then identifies technology gaps in the current tools, and provides a survey of near- and far-term work to provide flight controllers with improved tools for executing human spaceflight plans.