Autonomous Procedure Execution: A Means Of Reducing Rosetta Operations Cost

Abstract

The International Rosetta Mission is a scientific mission of the European Space Agency. It will be launched in January 2003 and it will reach, after a journey of about 9 years, the nucleus of comet P/Wirtanen, to orbit around it for almost two years. The characteristics of the mission, in particular its long duration and the fact that the most critical and intense operations phases occur many years after launch, induced ESA to define an operations concept that could take advantage of the low activity level required during the cruise phases. The aim was to minimise human intervention during non-critical mission phases by means of automated ground systems operations, in order to reduce the size of the flight control team.

This paper describes the process that led to the definition of a concept for implementation of operations automation for Rosetta. The trade-off process and the analysis of projected cost savings compared to the traditional approach are explained and discussed. General recommendations on how to achieve mission operations cost reduction by applying automation are derived.