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Michael Mewhinney                   April 2, 2003
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
Phone: 650/604-3937 or 650/604-9000
E-mail: Michael.S.Mewhinney{at}nasa.gov


RELEASE: 03-20AR
NASA STRIVING TO IMPROVE EARTH SCIENCE MISSION PLANNING

NASA scientists are developing a new planning and scheduling system 
for Earth observation satellites (EOS), designed to acquire and 
integrate data from multiple complementary Earth-sensing instruments, 
enabling them to build complex models of the Earth's ecosystem.

Developed by a team of scientists at NASA Ames Research Center 
located in California's Silicon Valley and NASA Goddard Space Flight 
Center, Greenbelt, Md., the new software is being designed to 
coordinate the observations made by entire fleets of satellites, 
which currently is done manually by each satellite's individual 
mission operation center.

"The scientific need for multiple sources of Earth science data in 
order to explain complex phenomena will require coordination in 
instrument scheduling and operations," explained Robert Morris, a 
computer scientist at NASA Ames who serves as the project's principal 
investigator.   Morris heads a seven-member team of experts in 
planning technology, systems integration and engineering, Earth 
science and mission operations.

"We propose to develop both a set of technology concepts and a 
prototype system based on these concepts that will address problems 
in coordinated scheduling, while acknowledging the realities of 
present-day mission design concepts," Morris added.

Entitled "Planning and Scheduling of Coordinated Science 
Observations," the project recently received funding from NASA's 
Office of Earth Science under the Advanced Information Systems 
Technology (AIST) Program.  The project was one of 21 new 
investigations in information systems technology development that 
received over $20 million from the AIST Program. NASA Ames' project 
received nearly $900,000.

Through the AIST Program, NASA invests in research and development of 
new and innovative information technologies.  The research supports 
and enhances NASA's Earth science enterprise and applications 
objectives as part of the agency's mission to understand and protect 
our home planet.

"The Committee on Earth Observation Satellites estimates that 
international space agencies are planning more than 80 
Earth-observing missions over the next 15 years," Morris noted in the 
introduction to "An Integrated Architecture for Science Observation 
Scheduling for Fleets of Earth Observing Spacecraft," a research 
paper he co-authored with Jennifer Dungan, Jeremy Frank, Lina Khatib 
and David E. Smith.  "The missions will carry over 200 different 
instruments, providing measurements of many environmental change 
parameters."

Morris and his team of NASA scientists hope to improve communication 
between the various mission planners by using automated scheduling 
technology to coordinate satellite imaging and manage the increasing 
volume of scientific data produced during the missions.

Over the course of the two-year project, the science team will design 
algorithms that can be used to integrate new observation requests 
with an EOS constellation's existing operations plan.  Upon 
completion of that phase, the team will integrate science observation 
scheduling technology developed at NASA Ames with the Automated 
Mission Planning and Scheduling (AMPS) system developed at NASA 
Goddard for use with EOS missions involving either single or multiple 
satellites. 

Finally, the team will develop a technology plan for coordinated 
science planning for multiple missions and an enhanced automated tool 
for coordinated science planning of future EOS missions.  The tool 
would be integrated with data collected by ground stations, to 
improve mission management and communication.

When the project is completed, Morris and the other members of the 
science team hope that the new planning and scheduling system will 
help Earth scientists develop better models of the Earth's ecosystem. 

"The goal is that through this sort of automation and increased 
coordination, the ultimate outcome will be more useful scientific 
data," Morris said. 

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