Enabling and Enhancing Astrophysical Observations with Autonomous Systems Rashied Amini1;a, Steve Chien1, Lorraine Fesq1, Jeremy Frank2 , Ksenia Kolcio3, Bertrand Mennsesson1, Sara Seager4, Rachel Street5 July 10, 2019 Endorsements Patricia Beauchamp1, John Day1, Russell Genet6, Jason Glenn7, Ryan Mackey1, Marco Quadrelli1, Rebecca Ringuette8, Daniel Stern1, Tiago Vaquero1 1NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory 2NASA Ames Research Center 3Okean Solutions 4 arXiv:2009.07361v1 [astro-ph.IM] 15 Sep 2020 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5Las Cumbres Observatory 6California Polytechnic State University 7University of Colorado at Boulder 8University of Iowa a
[email protected] c 2019 California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged. 1 Executive Summary Servicing is a legal requirement for WFIRST Autonomy is the ability of a system to achieve and the Flagship mission of the 2030s [5], yet goals while operating independently of exter- past and planned demonstrations may not pro- nal control [1]. The revolutionary advantages vide sufficient future heritage to confidently meet of autonomous systems are recognized in nu- this requirement. In-space assembly (ISA) is cur- merous markets, e.g. automotive, aeronautics. rently being evaluated to construct large aper- Acknowledging the revolutionary impact of au- ture space telescopes [6]. For both servicing and tonomous systems, demand is increasing from ISA, there are questions about how nominal op- consumers and businesses alike and investments erations will be assured, the feasibility of teleop- have grown year-over-year to meet demand. In eration in deep space, and response to anomalies self-driving cars alone, $76B has been invested during robotic operation. from 2014 to 2017 [2]. In the previous Planetary The past decade has seen a revolution in Science Decadal, increased autonomy was identi- the access to space, with low cost launch ve- fied as one of eight core multi-mission technolo- hicles, commercial off-the-shelf technology, and gies required for future missions [3].