Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy

Distributed Spacecraft Systems are a type of multi-spacecraft mission architecture that can not only provide improved resolution, coverage, and availability of existing missions, but also enable missions that would be previously infeasible using traditional approaches. Autonomy is a critical need for these systems, since the cost associated with applying conventional approaches for command and control does not scale with the number of spacecraft. Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy (DSA) is a project developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that enables distributed spacecraft systems through the development of three capabilities: scalable communication, distributed coordination and planning, and human-swarm interaction. DSA will demonstrate these capabilities in two contexts. The first context is a flight demonstration consisting of a software payload hosted on the Starling-1 small-spacecraft mission. This software payload will use the on-board GPS receiver to perform in-situ, swarm-level reconfiguration in response to observed features in the Topside Ionosphere. The second context is a scalability study, which shows how the technologies developed in the flight demonstration can scale to a large number of spacecraft (approximately 100). The scalability demonstration applies the tools developed for the flight mission to a hardware-in-the-loop simulation of the flight software payload.