Roy E. Gladden

Mars Relay Operations Service (MaROS): Managing strategic and tactical relay for the evolving Mars network

Orbital relay of landed asset data have been a critical component of the Martian communications network for landed Mars missions from 2004 through the current day. Lessons learned from the first several years of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) and Phoenix lander relay experiences highlighted clear deficiencies with relay processes and tools that directly led to the proposal for and implementation of a new system, the Mars Relay Operations Service (MaROS). MaROS provides a central point of coordination between lander and orbiter mission teams for management of strategic and tactical relay activities, and further provides resources to track and correlate relay session performance data. MaROS has been in use by the operations teams of Odyssey, MRO, and MER since mid-2010, and development continues to improve and expand the system capabilities. This paper will discuss the considerations for the MaROS implementation, provide an overview of the architecture and design, and describe the role of the system in the current and next-generation Mars Relay Network.

Implementing Strategic Planning Capabilities Within the Mars Relay Operations Service

Since the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER), Spirit and Opportunity, began their travels across the Martian surface in January of 2004, orbiting spacecraft such as the Mars 2001 Odyssey orbiter have relayed the majority of their collected scientific and operational data to and from Earth. From the beginning of those missions, it was evident that using orbiters to relay data to and from the surface of Mars was a vastly more efficient communications strategy in terms of power consumption and bandwidth compared to direct-to-Earth means. However, the coordination between the various spacecraft, which are largely managed independently and on differing commanding timelines, has always proven to be a challenge. Until recently, the ground operators of all these spacecraft have coordinated the movement of data through this network using a collection of ad hoc human interfaces and various, independent software tools. The Mars Relay Operations Service (MaROS) has been developed to manage the evolving needs of the Mars relay network, and specifically to standardize and integrate the relay planning and coordination data into a centralized infrastructure. This paper explores the journey of developing the MaROS system, from inception to delivery and acceptance by the Mars mission users.