Stuart Frye

An autonomous earth-observing sensorWeb

We describe a network of sensors linked by software and the Internet to an autonomous satellite observation response capability. This system of systems is designed with a flexible, modular, architecture to facilitate expansion in sensors, customization of trigger conditions, and customization of responses. This system has been used to implement a global surveillance program of science phenomena including: volcanoes, flooding, cryosphere events, and atmospheric phenomena. In this paper we describe the importance of the earth observing sensorweb application as well as overall architecture for the system of systems.

The EO-1 Autonomous Science Agent

An Autonomous Science Agent is currently flying onboard the Earth Observing One Spacecraft. This software enables the spacecraft to autonomously detect and respond to science events occurring on the Earth. The package includes software systems that perform science data analysis, deliberative planning, and run-time robust execution. Because of the deployment to a remote spacecraft, this Autonomous Science Agent has stringent constraints of autonomy, reliability, and limited computing resources. We describe the constraints and how they were addressed in our agent design, validation, and deployment.

The Earth Observing One (EO-1) Satellite Mission: Over a Decade in Space

The Earth Observing One (EO-1) satellite was launched in November 2000 as a technology demonstration mission with an estimated 1-year lifespan. It has now successfully completed 12 years of high spatial resolution imaging operations from low Earth orbit. EO-1s two main instruments, Hyperion and the Advanced Land Imager (ALI), have both served as prototypes for new generation satellite missions. ALI, an innovative multispectral instrument, is the forerunner of the Operational Land Imager (OLI) onboard the Landsat Data Continuity Missions (LDCM) Landsat-8 satellite, recently launched in Feb. 2013. Hyperion, a hyperspectral instrument, serves as the heritage orbital spectrometer for future global platforms, including the proposed NASA Hyperspectral Infrared Imager (HyspIRI) and the forthcoming (in 2017) German satellite, EnMAP. This JSTARS Special Issue is dedicated to EO-1. This paper serves as an introduction to the Hyperion and ALI instruments, their capabilities, and the important contributions this mission has made to the science and technology communities. This paper also provides an overview of the EO-1 mission, including the several operational phases which have characterized its lifetime. It also briefly describes calibration and validation activities, and gives an overview of the spin-off technologies, including disaster monitoring and new Web-based tools which can be adapted for use in future missions.

Lessons learned from autonomous sciencecraft experiment

An Autonomous Science Agent has been flying onboard the Earth Observing One Spacecraft since 2003. This software enables the spacecraft to autonomously detect and responds to science events occurring on the Earth such as volcanoes, flooding, and snow melt. The package includes AI-based software systems that perform science data analysis, deliberative planning, and run-time robust execution. This software is in routine use to fly the EO-1 mission. In this paper we briefly review the agent architecture and discuss lessons learned from this multi-year flight effort pertinent to deployment of software agents to critical applications.

Use of the Earth Observing One (EO-1) Satellite for the Namibia SensorWeb Flood Early Warning Pilot

The Earth Observing One (EO-1) satellite was launched in November 2000 as a one year technology demonstration mission for a variety of space technologies. After the first year, it was used as a pathfinder for the creation of SensorWebs. A SensorWeb is the integration of a variety of space, airborne and ground sensors into a loosely coupled collaborative sensor system that automatically provides useful data products. Typically, a SensorWeb is comprised of heterogeneous sensors tied together with an open messaging architecture and web services. SensorWebs provide easier access to sensor data, automated data product production and rapid data product delivery. Disasters are the perfect arena to test SensorWeb functionality since emergency workers and managers need easy and rapid access to satellite, airborne and in-situ sensor data as decision support tools. The Namibia Early Flood Warning SensorWeb pilot project was established to experiment with various aspects of sensor interoperability and SensorWeb functionality. The SensorWeb system features EO-1 data along with other data sets from such satellites as Radarsat, Terra and Aqua. Finally, the SensorWeb team began to examine how to measure economic impact of SensorWeb technology infusion. This paper describes the architecture and software components that were developed along with performance improvements that were experienced. Also, problems and challenges that were encountered are described along with a vision for future enhancements to mitigate some of the problems.

Sensor Webs: Where They are Today and What are the Future Needs?

Increasingly, space and ground sensors are being linked together to produce added value for measurements. One area of need that is emerging is in the Earth Sciences where enhanced measurements of transient science events are enabled via the use of sensor webs. This panel will examine the current state of the art and what the future holds. Furthermore, it will examine what technology gaps that ought to be filled in order achieve the future sensor web architectures that will fulfill the vision of the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS) as agreed upon by over 60 countries at the Third Earth Observation Summit in February 2005. Panel members will discuss their experience with past experiments and outline their views about future needs. This will be followed by an open discussion with the audience

Mission operations of Earth Observing-1 with onboard autonomy

Space mission operations are extremely labor and knowledge-intensive and are driven by the ground and flight systems. Inclusion of an autonomy capability can have dramatic effects on mission operations. We describe the prior, labor and knowledge intensive mission operations flow for the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) spacecraft as well as the new autonomous operations as part of the Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment (ASE)

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

An autonomous Earth observing sensorweb

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.

The autonomous sciencecraft embedded systems architecture

We describe a network of sensors linked by software and the Internet to an autonomous satellite observation response capability. This sensor network is designed with a flexible, modular, architecture to facilitate expansion in sensors, customization of trigger conditions, and customization of responses. This system has been used to implement a global surveillance program of multiple science phenomena including: volcanoes, flooding, cryosphere events, and atmospheric phenomena. In this paper we describe the importance of the Earth observing sensorWeb application as well as overall architecture for the network