Systems approach to the satellite operations problem

It is noted that the projected increase in satellites needed to satisfy future military, scientific, and commercial missions will soon be overwhelming current ground-operations capabilities. An intelligent processing architecture, IntelliSTAR, that addresses the potential of automating the entire satellite operations domain (planning, scheduling, execution, and analysis) is discussed. The architecture has been developed with flexibility in mind. In particular, IntelliSTAR has been structured to allow for development and validation on the ground, prior to deployment in space. The overall architecture is described, with particular emphasis placed on the scheduling of satellite missions.<>