Title :
Space autonomy as migration of functionality: the Mars case
Author :
Grant, T. ; Soler, A.O. ; Bos, A. ; Brauer, U. ; Neerinex, M. ; Wolff, M.
Author_Institution :
Sci. & Technol. B.V., Delft
Abstract :
This paper develops Grandjean and Lecouat´s insight that spacecraft autonomy can be seen as the migration of functionality from the ground segment to the space segment. Their insight is extended to manned planetary exploration missions and applied to an IT-based crew assistant for supporting manned and unmanned Martian operations. The Mission Crew Execution Assistant (MECA) system is seen as a distributed, personal ePartner in a ubiquitous computing environment, designed to amplify the cognitive capacities of human-machine teams during planetary exploration missions to cope autonomously with unexpected, complex and potentially hazardous situations. The paper shows that the autonomy requirements have implications for the MECA system´s architecture and functionality. The research reported here has been performed by a consortium led by TNO Human Factors (NL) in Phase 1 of the MECA project funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) under contract number 19149/05/NL/JA
Keywords :
Mars; aerospace computing; space research; ubiquitous computing; European Space Agency; IT-based crew assistant; MECA system; Mars case; Mission Crew Execution Assistant; TNO Human Factors; cognitive capacities; distributed personal ePartner; ground segment; human-machine teams; manned Martian operations; manned planetary exploration missions; space segment; spacecraft autonomy; ubiquitous computing environment; unmanned Martian operations; Computer aided software engineering; Costs; Human factors; Man machine systems; Mars; Monitoring; Space technology; Space vehicles; Telecommunication control; Ubiquitous computing;
Conference_Titel :
Space Mission Challenges for Information Technology, 2006. SMC-IT 2006. Second IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Pasadena, CA
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-2644-6
DOI :
10.1109/SMC-IT.2006.72
