30 research outputs found

    Pushing the Boundaries of Spacecraft Autonomy and Resilience with a Custom Software Framework and Onboard Digital Twin

    Get PDF
    This research addresses the high CubeSat mission failure rates caused by inadequate software and overreliance on ground control. By applying a reliable design methodology to flight software development and developing an onboard digital twin platform with fault prediction capabilities, this study provides a solution to increase satellite resilience and autonomy, thus reducing the risk of mission failure. These findings have implications for spacecraft of all sizes, paving the way for more resilient space missions

    Science opportunities with solar sailing smallsats

    Full text link
    Recently, we witnessed how the synergy of small satellite technology and solar sailing propulsion enables new missions. Together, small satellites with lightweight instruments and solar sails offer affordable access to deep regions of the solar system, also making it possible to realize hard-to-reach trajectories that are not constrained to the ecliptic plane. Combining these two technologies can drastically reduce travel times within the solar system, while delivering robust science. With solar sailing propulsion capable of reaching the velocities of ~5-10 AU/yr, missions using a rideshare launch may reach the Jovian system in two years, Saturn in three. The same technologies could allow reaching solar polar orbits in less than two years. Fast, cost-effective, and maneuverable sailcraft that may travel outside the ecliptic plane open new opportunities for affordable solar system exploration, with great promise for heliophysics, planetary science, and astrophysics. Such missions could be modularized to reach different destinations with different sets of instruments. Benefiting from this progress, we present the "Sundiver" concept, offering novel possibilities for the science community. We discuss some of the key technologies, the current design of the Sundiver sailcraft vehicle and innovative instruments, along with unique science opportunities that these technologies enable, especially as this exploration paradigm evolves. We formulate policy recommendations to allow national space agencies, industry, and other stakeholders to establish a strong scientific, programmatic, and commercial focus, enrich and deepen the space enterprise and broaden its advocacy base by including the Sundiver paradigm as a part of broader space exploration efforts.Comment: 34 pages, 12 figures, 2 table

    The State of the Art of Information Integration in Space Applications

    Get PDF
    This paper aims to present a comprehensive survey on information integration (II) in space informatics. With an ever-increasing scale and dynamics of complex space systems, II has become essential in dealing with the complexity, changes, dynamics, and uncertainties of space systems. The applications of space II (SII) require addressing some distinctive functional requirements (FRs) of heterogeneity, networking, communication, security, latency, and resilience; while limited works are available to examine recent advances of SII thoroughly. This survey helps to gain the understanding of the state of the art of SII in sense that (1) technical drivers for SII are discussed and classified; (2) existing works in space system development are analyzed in terms of their contributions to space economy, divisions, activities, and missions; (3) enabling space information technologies are explored at aspects of sensing, communication, networking, data analysis, and system integration; (4) the importance of first-time right (FTR) for implementation of a space system is emphasized, the limitations of digital twin (DT-I) as technological enablers are discussed, and a concept digital-triad (DT-II) is introduced as an information platform to overcome these limitations with a list of fundamental design principles; (5) the research challenges and opportunities are discussed to promote SII and advance space informatics in future

    Application of Artificial Intelligence Approaches in the Flood Management Process for Assessing Blockage at Cross-Drainage Hydraulic Structures

    Get PDF
    Floods are the most recurrent, widespread and damaging natural disasters, and are ex-pected to become further devastating because of global warming. Blockage of cross-drainage hydraulic structures (e.g., culverts, bridges) by flood-borne debris is an influen-tial factor which usually results in reducing hydraulic capacity, diverting the flows, dam-aging structures and downstream scouring. Australia is among the countries adversely impacted by blockage issues (e.g., 1998 floods in Wollongong, 2007 floods in Newcas-tle). In this context, Wollongong City Council (WCC), under the Australian Rainfall and Runoff (ARR), investigated the impact of blockage on floods and proposed guidelines to consider blockage in the design process for the first time. However, existing WCC guide-lines are based on various assumptions (i.e., visual inspections as representative of hy-draulic behaviour, post-flood blockage as representative of peak floods, blockage remains constant during the whole flooding event), that are not supported by scientific research while also being criticised by hydraulic design engineers. This suggests the need to per-form detailed investigations of blockage from both visual and hydraulic perspectives, in order to develop quantifiable relationships and incorporate blockage into design guide-lines of hydraulic structures. However, because of the complex nature of blockage as a process and the lack of blockage-related data from actual floods, conventional numerical modelling-based approaches have not achieved much success. The research in this thesis applies artificial intelligence (AI) approaches to assess the blockage at cross-drainage hydraulic structures, motivated by recent success achieved by AI in addressing complex real-world problems (e.g., scour depth estimation and flood inundation monitoring). The research has been carried out in three phases: (a) litera-ture review, (b) hydraulic blockage assessment, and (c) visual blockage assessment. The first phase investigates the use of computer vision in the flood management domain and provides context for blockage. The second phase investigates hydraulic blockage using lab scale experiments and the implementation of multiple machine learning approaches on datasets collected from lab experiments (i.e., Hydraulics-Lab Dataset (HD), Visual Hydraulics-Lab Dataset (VHD)). The artificial neural network (ANN) and end-to-end deep learning approaches reported top performers among the implemented approaches and demonstrated the potential of learning-based approaches in addressing blockage is-sues. The third phase assesses visual blockage at culverts using deep learning classifi-cation, detection and segmentation approaches for two types of visual assessments (i.e., blockage status classification, percentage visual blockage estimation). Firstly, a range of existing convolutional neural network (CNN) image classification models are imple-mented and compared using visual datasets (i.e., Images of Culvert Openings and Block-age (ICOB), VHD, Synthetic Images of Culverts (SIC)), with the aim to automate the process of manual visual blockage classification of culverts. The Neural Architecture Search Network (NASNet) model achieved best classification results among those im-plemented. Furthermore, the study identified background noise and simplified labelling criteria as two contributing factors in degraded performance of existing CNN models for blockage classification. To address the background clutter issue, a detection-classification pipeline is proposed and achieved improved visual blockage classification performance. The proposed pipeline has been deployed using edge computing hardware for blockage monitoring of actual culverts. The role of synthetic data (i.e., SIC) on the performance of culvert opening detection is also investigated. Secondly, an automated segmentation-classification deep learning pipeline is proposed to estimate the percentage of visual blockage at circular culverts to better prioritise culvert maintenance. The AI solutions proposed in this thesis are integrated into a blockage assessment framework, designed to be deployed through edge computing to monitor, record and assess blockage at cross-drainage hydraulic structures

    An overview of monitoring methods for assessing the performance of nature-based solutions against natural hazards

    Get PDF
    To bring to fruition the capability of nature-based solutions (NBS) in mitigating hydro-meteorological risks (HMRs) and facilitate their widespread uptake require a consolidated knowledge-base related to their monitoring methods, efficiency, functioning and the ecosystem services they provide. We attempt to fill this knowledge gap by reviewing and compiling the existing scientific literature on methods, including ground-based measurements (e.g. gauging stations, wireless sensor network) and remote sensing observations (e.g. from topographic LiDAR, multispectral and radar sensors) that have been used and/or can be relevant to monitor the performance of NBS against five HMRs: floods, droughts, heatwaves, landslides, and storm surges and coastal erosion. These can allow the mapping of the risks and impacts of the specific hydro-meteorological events. We found that the selection and application of monitoring methods mostly rely on the particular NBS being monitored, resource availability (e.g. time, budget, space) and type of HMRs. No standalone method currently exists that can allow monitoring the performance of NBS in its broadest view. However, equipments, tools and technologies developed for other purposes, such as for ground-based measurements and atmospheric observations, can be applied to accurately monitor the performance of NBS to mitigate HMRs. We also focused on the capabilities of passive and active remote sensing, pointing out their associated opportunities and difficulties for NBS monitoring application. We conclude that the advancement in airborne and satellite-based remote sensing technology has signified a leap in the systematic monitoring of NBS performance, as well as provided a robust way for the spatial and temporal comparison of NBS intervention versus its absence. This improved performance measurement can support the evaluation of existing uncertainty and scepticism in selecting NBS over the artificially built concrete structures or grey approaches by addressing the questions of performance precariousness. Remote sensing technical developments, however, take time to shift toward a state of operational readiness for monitoring the progress of NBS in place (e.g. green NBS growth rate, their changes and effectiveness through time). More research is required to develop a holistic approach, which could routinely and continually monitor the performance of NBS over a large scale of intervention. This performance evaluation could increase the ecological and socio-economic benefits of NBS, and also create high levels of their acceptance and confidence by overcoming potential scepticism of NBS implementations

    Design Concepts for a new Temporal Planning Paradigm

    Get PDF
    Abstract Throughout the history of space exploration, the complexity of missions has dramatically increased, from Sputnik in 1957 to MSL, a Mars rover mission launched in November 2011 with advanced autonomous capabilities. As a result, the mission plan that governs a spacecraft has also grown in complexity, pushing to the limit the capability of human operators to understand and manage it. However, the effective representation of large plans with multiple goals and constraints still represents a problem. In this paper, a novel approach to address this problem is presented. We propose a new planning paradigm named HTLN, intended to provide a compact and understandable representation of complex plans and goals based on Timeline planning and Hierarchical Temporal Networks. We also present the design of a planner based on HTLN, which enables new planning approaches that can improve the performance of present real-world domains

    Design of Intelligent and Open Avionics System Onboard

    Get PDF
    The continuous development of space missions has put forward requirements for high performance, high reliability, intelligence, effective integration, miniaturization, and quick turn around productization of the electronic system of satellites. The complexity of satellites has continued to increase, and the focus of satellite competition has shifted from the launch of success shifts to communication capacity, performance indicators, degree of flexibility, and continuous service capabilities. So, the importance of onboard avionics system is becoming increasingly prominent. In the future, the advanced avionics system integrates most of the platform’s electronic equipment. The design level of the system largely determines the performance of the satellite platform. This chapter focuses on the application requirements of the new generation of intelligent avionics system for future communication satellites and adopts an “open” architecture of “centralized management, distributed measurement and drive, and software and hardware ‘modular’ design” to build a universal, standardized, and scalable intelligent avionics system

    Small satellites for space science : A COSPAR scientific roadmap

    Get PDF
    This is a COSPAR roadmap to advance the frontiers of science through innovation and international collaboration using small satellites. The world of small satellites is evolving quickly and an opportunity exists to leverage these developments to make scientific progress. In particular, the increasing availability of low-cost launch and commercially available hardware provides an opportunity to reduce the overall cost of science missions. This in turn should increase flight rates and encourage scientists to propose more innovative concepts, leading to scientific breakthroughs. Moreover, new computer technologies and methods are changing the way data are acquired, managed, and processed. The large data sets enabled by small satellites will require a new paradigm for scientific data analysis. In this roadmap we provide several examples of long-term scientific visions that could be enabled by the small satellite revolution. For the purpose of this report, the term “small satellite” is somewhat arbitrarily defined as a spacecraft with an upper mass limit in the range of a few hundred kilograms. The mass limit is less important than the processes used to build and launch these satellites. The goal of this roadmap is to encourage the space science community to leverage developments in the small satellite industry in order to increase flight rates, and change the way small science satellites are built and managed. Five recommendations are made; one each to the science community, to space industry, to space agencies, to policy makers, and finally, to COSPAR

    Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop : February 27–28 and March 1, 2017, Washington, DC

    Get PDF
    This workshop is meant to provide NASA’s Planetary Science Division with a very long-range vision of what planetary science may look like in the future.Organizer, Lunar and Planetary Institute ; Conveners, James Green, NASA Planetary Science Division, Doris Daou, NASA Planetary Science Division ; Science Organizing Committee, Stephen Mackwell, Universities Space Research Association [and 14 others]PARTIAL CONTENTS: Exploration Missions to the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud--Future Mercury Exploration: Unique Science Opportunities from Our Solar System’s Innermost Planet--A Vision for Ice Giant Exploration--BAOBAB (Big and Outrageously Bold Asteroid Belt) Project--Asteroid Studies: A 35-Year Forecast--Sampling the Solar System: The Next Level of Understanding--A Ground Truth-Based Approach to Future Solar System Origins Research--Isotope Geochemistry for Comparative Planetology of Exoplanets--The Moon as a Laboratory for Biological Contamination Research--“Be Careful What You Wish For:” The Scientific, Practical, and Cultural Implications of Discovering Life in Our Solar System--The Importance of Particle Induced X-Ray Emission (PIXE) Analysis and Imaging to the Search for Life on the Ocean Worlds--Follow the (Outer Solar System) Water: Program Options to Explore Ocean Worlds--Analogies Among Current and Future Life Detection Missions and the Pharmaceutical/ Biomedical Industries--On Neuromorphic Architectures for Efficient, Robust, and Adaptable Autonomy in Life Detection and Other Deep Space Missions
    corecore