Within NASA's DSA project, researchers achieved multiple unprecedented feats when testing technologies for satellite swarms. Managed at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, the project develops essential software needed by autonomous, distributed, and intelligent spacecraft clusters that must interact seamlessly to achieve complex mission requirements.
"The Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy technology is very unique," explained Caleb Adams, DSA project manager at NASA Ames. "The software provides the satellite swarm with the science objective and the 'smarts' to get it done."
Typically, spacecraft in swarms are managed one by one from the ground. However, as the number of satellites and the complexity of their tasks grow under new constellation designs, direct "hands-on" supervision becomes less practical.
By distributing decision-making across a spacecraft ensemble, the swarm remains resilient even when one member encounters issues. This approach empowers each unit to shape the group's activities, providing a safeguard against isolated failures.
The DSA team advanced swarm technology in two notable ways: They developed software for small satellites, validated during NASA's Starling mission featuring four collaborative CubeSats with minimal ground input, and conducted a scalability study with a simulated swarm in a virtual lunar orbit.
"We did not tell the spacecraft how to do their science," noted Adams. "The DSA team figured out what science Starling did only after the experiment was completed. That has never been done before and it's very exciting!"
The accomplishments of DSA onboard Starling include the first fully distributed autonomous operation of multiple spacecraft, the first use of space-to-space communications to autonomously share status information between multiple spacecraft, the first demonstration of fully distributed reactive operations onboard multiple spacecraft, the first use of a general-purpose automated reasoning system onboard a spacecraft, and the first use of fully distributed automated planning onboard multiple spacecraft.
During the demonstration, which took place between August 2023 and May 2024, Starling's swarm received GPS signals that traversed the ionosphere, uncovering brief atmospheric phenomena for the satellites to study. Because their positions shifted relative to each other, the GPS sources, and the ionospheric environment, they had to constantly exchange information to stay focused on emerging targets.
Each Starling satellite analyzed its own results and acted accordingly. Whenever new details arrived, updated observation and action plans were considered, letting the swarm quickly adapt to changing situations.
"Reaching the project goal of demonstrating the first fully autonomous distributed space mission was made possible by the DSA team's development of distributed autonomy software that allowed the spacecraft to work together seamlessly," Adams continued.
The DSA lunar Position, Navigation, and Timing study demonstrated the swarm's scalability in a simulated environment. Over two years, the team performed nearly one hundred increasingly complex coordination trials involving multiple flight computers in both low- and high-altitude lunar orbits, showing that a cluster of as many as 60 spacecraft is feasible.
The team is further developing DSA's capabilities to allow mission operators to manage swarms of hundreds of spacecraft as if they were one system.
Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy's accomplishments mark a significant milestone in advancing autonomous distributed space systems that will enable new kinds of scientific research and exploration.
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