Making an Impact

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is being challenged to perform more frequent and intensive space-exploration missions at greatly reduced cost. Nowhere is this challenge more acute than among robotic planetary exploration missions that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) conducts for NASA. This article describes recent and ongoing work on spacecraft autonomy and ground systems that builds on a legacy of existing success at JPL applying AI techniques to challenging computational problems in planning and scheduling, real-time monitoring and control, scientific data analysis, and design automation. I research and technology development reached critical mass at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) about five years ago. In the last three years, the effort has begun to bear fruit in the form of numerous JPL and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) applications of AI technology in the areas of planning and scheduling, real-time monitoring and control, scientific data analysis, and design automation.