Todd Bayer

Update - concept of operations for Integrated Model-Centric Engineering at JPL

The increasingly ambitious requirements levied on JPLs space science missions, and the development pace of such missions, challenge our current engineering practices. 12All the engineering disciplines face this growth in complexity to some degree, but the challenges are greatest in systems engineering where numerous competing interests must be reconciled and where complex system-level interactions must be identified and managed. Undesired system-level interactions are increasingly a major risk factor that cannot be reliably exposed by testing, and natural-language single-viewpoint specifications are inadequate to capture and expose system level interactions and characteristics. Systems engineering practices must improve to meet these challenges, and the most promising approach today is the movement toward a more integrated and model-centric approach to mission conception, design, implementation and operations. This approach elevates engineering models to a principal role in systems engineering, gradually replacing traditional document-centric engineering practices.

An operations concept for Integrated Model-Centric Engineering at JPL

As JPLs missions grow more complex, the need for improved systems engineering processes is becoming clear. Of significant promise in this regard is the move toward a more integrated and model-centric approach to mission conception, design, implementation and operations. The Integrated Model-Centric Engineering (IMCE) Initiative, now underway at JPL, seeks to lay the groundwork for these improvements. This paper will report progress on three fronts: articulating JPLs need for IMCE; characterizing the enterprise into which IMCE capabilities will be deployed; and constructing an operations concept for a flight project development in an integrated model-centric environment.1 2

In-Flight Anomalies and Lessons Learned from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mission

The Mars reconnaissance orbiter mission has as its primary objectives: advance our understanding of the current Mars climate, the processes that have formed and modified the surface of the planet, and the extent to which water has played a role in surface processes; identify sites of possible aqueous activity indicating environments that may have been or are conducive to biological activity; and thus, identify and characterize sites for future landed missions; and provide forward and return relay services for current and future Mars landed assets. MROs crucial role in the long term strategy for Mars exploration requires a high level of reliability during its 5.4 year mission. This requires an architecture which incorporates extensive redundancy and cross-strapping. The overall MRO architecture is discussed in this context. Because of the distances and hence light- times involved, the spacecraft itself must be able to utilize this redundancy in responding to time-critical failures. The architecture of MROs semi-autonomous fault protection (FP) software, known as SPIDER (spacecraft imbedded distributed error response), is described. For cases where FP is unable to recognize a potentially threatening condition, either due to known limitations or software flaws, intervention by ground operations is required. Each of MROs significant in-flight anomalies is examined, with lessons learned for redundancy and FP architectures and for ground operations.

Model Based Systems Engineering on the Europa mission concept study

At the start of 2011, the proposed Jupiter Europa Orbiter (JEO) mission was staffing up in expectation of becoming an official project later in the year for a launch in 2020. A unique aspect of the pre-project work was a strong emphasis and investment on the foundations of Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE). As so often happens in this business, plans changed: NASAs budget and science priorities were released and together fundamentally changed the course of JEO. As a result, it returned to being a study task whose objective is to propose more affordable ways to accomplish the science. As part of this transition, the question arose as to whether it could continue to afford the investment in MBSE. In short, the MBSE infusion has survived and is providing clear value to the study effort. In the process, the need to remain relevant in the new environment has brought about a wave of innovation and progress. By leveraging the existing infrastructure and a modest additional investment, striking advances in the capture and analysis of designs using MBSE were achieved. The effort has reaffirmed the importance of architecting. It has successfully harnessed the synergistic relationship of architecting to system modeling. We have found that MBSE can provide greater agility than traditional methods. We have also found that a diverse ‘ecosystem’ of modeling tools and languages (SysML, Mathematica, even Excel) is not only viable, but an important enabler of agility and adaptability. This paper will describe the successful application of MBSE in the dynamic environment of early mission formulation, the significant results produced and lessons learned in the process.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in-flight anomalies and lessons learned: An update

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission has as its primary objectives: advance our understanding of the current Mars climate, the processes that have formed and modified the surface of the planet and the extent to which water has played a role in surface processes; identify sites of possible aqueous activity indicating environments that may have been or are conducive to biological activity; and thus identify and characterize sites for future landed missions; and provide forward and return relay services for current and future Mars landed assets. MROs crucial role in the long term strategy for Mars exploration requires a high level of reliability during its 5.4 year mission. This requires an architecture which incorporates extensive redundancy and cross-strapping. Because of the distances and hence light-times involved, the spacecraft itself must be able to utilize this redundancy in responding to time-critical failures. For cases where fault protection is unable to recognize a potentially threatening condition, either due to known limitations or software flaws, intervention by ground operations is required. These aspects of MROs design were discussed in a previous paper [Ref. 1]. This paper provides an update to the original paper, describing MROs significant in-flight anomalies over the past year, with lessons learned for redundancy and fault protection architectures and for ground operations

Europa Clipper mission: the habitability of an icy moon

Europa, the fourth largest moon of Jupiter, is believed to be one of the best places in the solar system to look for extant life beyond Earth. The 2011 Planetary Decadal Survey, Vision and Voyages, states: “Because of this oceans potential suitability for life, Europa is one of the most important targets in all of planetary science”. Exploring Europa to investigate its habitability is the goal of the proposed Europa Clipper mission. This exploration is intimately tied to understanding the three “ingredients” for life: liquid water, chemistry, and energy. The Europa Clipper mission would investigate these ingredients by comprehensively exploring Europas ice shell and liquid ocean interface, surface geology and surface composition to glean insight into the inner workings of this fascinating moon. In addition, a lander mission is seen as a possible future step, but current data about the Jovian radiation environment and about potential landing site hazards and potential safe landing zones is insufficient. Therefore an additional goal of the mission would be to characterize the radiation environment near Europa and investigate scientifically compelling sites for hazards, to inform a potential future landed mission. The proposed Europa Clipper mission concept envisions sending a flight system, consisting of a spacecraft equipped with a payload of NASA-selected scientific instruments, to execute numerous flybys of Europa while in Jupiter orbit. A key challenge is that the flight system must survive and operate in the intense Jovian radiation environment, which is especially harsh at Europa. The innovative design of this multiple-flyby tour is an enabling feature of this mission: by minimizing the time spent in the radiation environment the spacecraft complexity and cost has been significantly reduced compared to previous mission concepts. The spacecraft would launch from Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, on a NASA supplied launch vehicle, no earlier than 2022. The proposed mission would be formulated and implemented by a joint Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) Project team.

Europa clipper spacecraft configuration evolution

The Europa Clipper mission is a concept under study by a joint JPL and APL team that would conduct detailed reconnaissance of Jupiters moon Europa, and would investigate whether the icy moon could harbor conditions suitable for life. The mission would perform a detailed investigation of Europa using a highly capable, radiation-tolerant spacecraft that would perform repeated close flybys of the icy moon from an orbit around Jupiter. The 2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey recommended an immediate effort to find major cost reductions for the Jupiter Europa Orbiter (JEO) concept. The Europa Clipper multipleflyby mission concept meets this challenge by NASA and the Decadal Survey by implementing a reduced scope Europa mission relative to Jupiter Europa Orbiter (JEO), suitable for satisfying the science objectives in a cost-effective, low-risk manner. This paper describes the evolution of the Europa Clipper spacecraft configuration and the major trade-offs for the conceptual mechanical design.

Europa mission update: Beyond payload selection

Europa, the fourth largest moon of Jupiter, is believed to be one of the best places in the solar system to look for extant life beyond Earth. The 2011 Planetary Decadal Survey, Vision and Voyages, states: “Because of this oceans potential suitability for life, Europa is one of the most important targets in all of planetary science.” Exploring Europa to investigate its habitability is the goal of the planned Europa Mission. This exploration is intimately tied to understanding the three “ingredients” for life: liquid water, chemistry, and energy. The Europa Mission would investigate these ingredients by comprehensively exploring Europas ice shell and liquid ocean interface, surface geology and surface composition to glean insight into the inner workings of this fascinating moon. In addition, a lander mission is seen as a possible future step, but current data about the Jovian radiation environment and about potential landing site hazards and potential safe landing zones is insufficient. Therefore an additional goal of the mission would be to characterize the radiation environment near Europa and investigate scientifically compelling sites for hazards, to inform a potential future landed mission. The Europa Mission envisions sending a flight system, consisting of a spacecraft equipped with a payload of NASA-selected scientific instruments, to execute numerous flybys of Europa while in Jupiter orbit. A key challenge is that the flight system must survive and operate in the intense Jovian radiation environment, which is especially harsh at Europa. The innovative design of this multiple-flyby tour is an enabling feature of this mission: by minimizing the time spent in the radiation environment the spacecraft complexity and cost has been significantly reduced compared to previous mission concepts. The spacecraft would launch from Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, on a NASA supplied launch vehicle, no earlier than 2022. The formulation and implementation of the proposed mission is led by a joint Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) Project team. In June 2015, NASA announced the selection of a highly capable suite of 10 scientific investigations to be flown on the Europa Mission. Since the announcement, the Europa Mission Team has updated the spacecraft design in order to fully accommodate this instrument suite — a significant challenge. After completing a successful System Requirements Review and Mission Definition Review in January of 2017, the project is currently transitioning from the concept development phase to the preliminary design phase of the mission. This paper will describe the progress of the Europa Mission since 2015, including maturation of the spacecraft design, requirements, system analyses, and mission trajectories.