Ashley Gerard Davies

Extreme volcanism on Io: Latest insights at the end of Galileo era

Galileo has now completed 7 years exploring Jupiter. The spacecraft obtained breathtaking views of the four major satellites, and studied Jupiters clouds and atmospheric composition, rings, small satellites, and magnetic field. It had five successful close flybys and many distant observations of Io. Scientists already knew from Voyager and Earth-based astronomy that Io is by far the most volcanically active object in the solar system. Galileo has given us stunning color panoramas of Ios surface and unprecedented close views of erupting volcanoes (Figure 1) and the largest active flows observed anywhere. Among recent discoveries about Io, perhaps most astonishing since Voyager, is that some lavas possess emission temperatures greater than any lavas erupted on Earth today and possibly since the start of Earths geologic history. The Io science community has identified three alternative interpretations of Ios hottest lavas: (1) ultramafic material similar to komatiite; (2) superheated lava; or (3) an ultra-refractory substance deficient in silica and rich in Ca-Al oxides.

Enhancing Science and Automating Operations using Onboard Autonomy

Autonomy software, as part of the NASA New Millennium Space Technology 6 Project, is currently flying onboard the Earth Observing One (EO-1) Spacecraft. This software enables the spacecraft to autonomously detect, track, and respond to science events observed in instrument data. Included are onboard software systems that perform science data analysis, deliberative planning, and run-time robust execution. This software has demonstrated the potential for space missions to use onboard decision-making to detect, analyze, and respond to science events, and to downlink only the highest value science data. Using this science agent, the EO-1 mission has experienced over 100 times increase in science return measured as the number of science events captured per megabyte of downlink. As a result, significant portions of the mission planning & sequencing processes have been automated, reducing EO-1 operations cost by

Autonomous Science on the EO-1 Mission

1M/year. In this paper, we will describe the evolution of the software from prototype to full time operation onboard EO-1. We will quantify the increase in science, decrease in operations cost, and streamlining of operations procedures. Included will be a description of how this software was adapted post-launch to the EO-1 mission, which had very limited computing resources which constrained the autonomy flight software. We will discuss ongoing deployments of this software to the Mars Exploration Rovers and Mars Odyssey Missions as well as a discussion of lessons learned during this project. Finally, we will discuss how the onboard autonomy has been used in conjunction with other satellites and ground sensors to form an autonomous sensor-web to study volcanoes, floods, sea-ice topography, and wild fires. As demonstrated on EO-1, onboard autonomy is a revolutionary advance that will change the operations approach on future NASA missions. The importance of this software has been recognized by numerous awards including being a co-winner of the 2005 NASA Software of the Year Award.