Mission Automation and Autonomy for the Mars Orbiter Mission

For interplanetary missions such as the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), operating at considerable distances from the Earth, the paradigms of autonomy and automation are especially pertinent. For mission autonomy, the reasons are identified to extend the existing features and adding new mechanisms on-board the spacecraft, which were not available in earlier satellites. For mission automation, space segment and ground segment elements such as mission planning system and automation in the control room are reviewed and necessary elements added.

For interplanetary missions where distances and times for to and fro travel are more, S/C has to micro manage itself. Therefore it would be essential to use on-board to use on-board autonomy to recognize problems on-board the spacecraft and fix them automatically. Thus, autonomous fault detection becomes vital for such long-term, long-distance missions. Various FDIR (Fault Detection, Isolation and Reconfigure) logics were proposed to be added to take care of several autonomy actions. Safe mode recovery and reconfiguration is one of the most critical autonomy features as the ground intervention is not possible till the on-board antenna is automatically oriented towards Earth by the spacecraft.

Similarly, mission automation concepts have been added for various operations with known timelines such as performing Mars Orbiter Insertion operation through an on-board sequencer and various payload operations within an orbit using CCB and Macros features of the on-board TCP processor. One of the most important aspects of mission automation is mission planning, i.e. to work out a proper timeline for all onboard and ground operations using an Executive Scheduler on ground and make the spacecraft ready to take actions based on set timelines.