Abstract:

Space exploration missions, both crewed and robotic, must contend with the inherent risks of operating in harsh and often uncertain environments while striving to meet their operational objectives. Traditionally, planning and executing space missions has involved multidisciplinary mission operations teams composed of dozens of scientists and engineers on Earth. This approach, while largely successful to date, is nevertheless costly and may not scale well as space exploration missions become more complex, dynamic, and venture further away from Earth.

This talk will describe the System Health Enabled Realtime Planning Advisor (SHERPA), an artificial intelligence (AI) decision support system for space missions that was created to reduce the burden on human experts in planning and executing complex and fast-paced space missions. SHERPA is based on the principles of decision making under uncertainty and currently serves as the primary strategic planning system on NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission. VIPER aims to land a mobile robot near the South Pole of the Moon to characterize the distribution water ice and other volatiles across a range of thermal environments.

The talk will explain how SHERPA has been used in the development of the VIPER mission and what role it will play when the mission operates on the surface of the Moon. Current work on extending SHERPA to support crewed missions to the Moon and Mars, as well as deep space robotic missions, will also be covered.

Bio:

Edward Balaban is a scientist at NASA Ames Research Center whose professional interests include robotics, autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, and the design of innovative space missions. He currently leads strategic planning for the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission and is a member of VIPER’s Science, Mission Planning, and Mission Operations teams. He is also the NASA Principal Investigator for the Fluidic Telescope (FLUTE) project. Edward holds a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University, a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from The George Washington University.