On-board Automated Mission Planning for Spacecraft Autonomy

A Survey

Abstract

Traditionally, space mission operations are based on pre-planned activities fulfilled by the ground segment. Due to restricted visibility windows and communication delays, these space systems cannot efficiently be completely controlled from the ground. A way to overcome this issue is to equip the satellite with an autonomous decision-making system such as techniques of on-board automated mission planning. Seeking to contribute to this area, this survey focuses on model-based planning to increase the level of the spacecraft autonomy. The most used on-board planning techniques for space missions such as temporal and hierarchical planning are presented in details. We discussed their main characteristics, including plan search strategies, on-board model, planning and scheduling approaches, repair methods and issues related to the integration of planning systems into the flight software. The paper closes by describing several on-board planners and comparing them by design choices and performance results