Operations engineers face the task of maintaining the health and functionality of a spacecraft, based on extremely limited information. This task becomes even more complicated when considering lag time between contacts, the light-time delay of bidirectional communications, and the prospect of multiple spacecraft operating simultaneously. Simple pre-programmed time tagged commands become increasingly burdensome in multi-spacecraft missions, particularly when trying to target ephemeral events in space that are difficult to predict with any accuracy. The Module for Event Driven Operations on Spacecraft (MEDOS) puts the operations engineer on the spacecraft. MEDOS takes raw telemetry and fuses them together into physically meaningful quantities that an engineer understands – turning voltages and decay times into “methane concentration”, or turning count rates and field vectors into “plasma density”. Then, MEDOS compares the physical parameters to generalized event definitions that scientists use all the time – “when the plasma density jumps and the magnetic field reverses direction, we crossed a boundary.” MEDOS computes a mathematical distance between measured parameters and rules from engineer to provide a numerical confidence in an event occurring. MEDOS does not require any training data, discrete if/then rules, or a PhD in AI to tune the model. All that MEDOS requires is for an engineer or scientist to describe the process that they go through every day – and then MEDOS encodes that process onto the spacecraft. MEDOS is able to analyze the ambient environment in real time, and respond to it in a way consistent with the response of an operations engineer. In Phase II we will expand MEDOS’s capability for multi-agent teaming with a new module, MADEM (Multi Agent Decision Engine for MEDOS.) We will also port the entire MEDOS framework into NASA’s core Flight System (cFS) and verify + validate MEDOS on flight qualified hardware, readying it for mission deployment.

MEDOS has secured a spot to fly on the SCENIC platform on the ISS (PI C. Wilson), and has been selected to fly on the NAMASTE effort, detecting methane from melting permafrost in Alaska (PI M. Sultana), pending Phase II completion. We have had communication with the MMS project scientist (G. Le) about infusing MEDOS into the MMS mission pending Phase II. We are also in contact with teams in earlier mission phases (GDC, 7 Sisters, Enceladus). We are also working to complement AutoNGC with MEDOS.

Outside of NASA we aim to target other space players, such as NOAA and DoD, particularly for detection of and response to surface events (fires, missile launches, etc.) We will also approach the private space industry (e.g. Starlink and Iridium.) Beyond space, underwater submersibles (such as the Titan submarine) as well as mining and resource extraction system could greatly benefit from MEDOS.