Design-based mission operation

The Virtual Mission project led by the Mission Simulation and Instrument Modeling Group at JPL has been playing an active role in the NASA-wide information technology infusion programs, such as, Information System Technology, Next-Generation Infrastructure Technology, and Intelligent Synthesis Environment. The goal of the Virtual Mission project is to enable automated design space exploration, progressive design optimization, and lifecycle-wide design validation to ensure mission success. Design-based mission operation has been a major part of the research effort in order to establish system-wide as well as lifecycle-wide impact analysis as an integral part of the mission design process. The design-based mission operation is approached by implementing Virtual Mission Lifecycle (VML), modeling and simulation tools and system engineering processes for building a virtual mission system that can perform a realistic mission operation during the design phase of a mission. As in the real mission lifecycle convention, the VML is composed of design, development, integration and test, and operation phases. This paper describes the four phases of the VML addressing a major challenge per phase, mission model framework, virtual prototyping, agent-based mission system integration, and virtual mission operation.