Autonomous and autonomic systems: a paradigm for future space exploration missions

More and more, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will rely on concepts from autonomous systems not only in mission control centers on the ground, but also on spacecraft and on rovers and other space assets on extraterrestrial bodies. Autonomy facilitates not only reduced operations costs, but also adaptable goal-driven functionality of mission systems. Space missions lacking autonomy will be unable to achieve the full range of advanced mission objectives, given that human control under dynamic environmental conditions will not be feasible due, in part, to the unavoidably high signal propagation latency and constrained data rates of mission communications links. While autonomy supports cost-effective accomplishment of mission goals, autonomicity supports survivability of remote mission assets, especially when tending by humans is not feasible. In principle, the properties of autonomic systems may enable space missions of a higher order than any previously flown. Analysis of two NASA agent-based systems previously prototyped, and of a proposed future mission involving numerous cooperating spacecraft, illustrates how autonomous and autonomic system concepts may be brought to bear on future space missions