Other
Scientific paper
Dec 2001
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agufm.p52a0568c&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2001, abstract #P52A-0568
Other
0933 Remote Sensing, 6008 Composition, 6055 Surfaces And Interiors, 6061 Remote Sensing, 6205 Asteroids And Meteoroids
Scientific paper
ANTS (Autonomous Nano-Technology Swarm), a NASA advanced mission concept, is a large (100 to 1000 member) swarm of pico-class (1 kg) totally autonomous spacecraft that prospect the asteroid belt. As the capacity and complexity of hardware and software, and the sophistication of technical and scientific goals have increased, greater cost constraints have led to fewer resources and thus, the need to operate spacecraft with less frequent contact. At present, autonomous operation of spacecraft systems allows great capability of spacecraft to 'safe' themselves when conditions threaten spacecraft safety. To further develop spacecraft capability, NASA is at the forefront of Intelligent Software Agent (ISA) research, performing experiments in space and on the ground to advance deliberative and collaborative autonomous control techniques. Selected missions in current planning stages require small groups of spacecraft to cooperate at a tactical level to select and schedule measurements to be made by appropriate instruments to characterize rapidly unfolding real-time events on a routine basis. The next level of development, which we are considering here, is in the use of ISAs at a strategic level, to explore the final, remote frontiers of the solar system, potentially involving a large class of objects with only infrequent contact possible. Obvious mission candidates are mainbelt asteroids, a population consisting of more than a million small bodies. Although a large fraction of solar system objects are asteroids, little data is available for them because the vast majority of them are too small to be observed except in close proximity. Asteroids originated in the transitional region between the inner (rocky) and outer (solidified gases) solar system, have remained largely unmodified since formation, and thus have a more primitive composition which includes higher abundances of siderophile (metallic iron-associated) elements and volatiles than other planetary surfaces. As a result, there has been interest in asteroids as sources of exploitable resources. Far more reconnaissance is required before such a program is undertaken. A traditional mission approach (to explore larger asteroids sequentially) is not adequate for determining the systematic distribution of exploitable material in the asteroid population. Our approach involves the use of distributed intelligence in a swarm of tiny spacecraft, each with specialized instrument capability (e.g., advanced computing, imaging, spectrometry, etc.) to evaluate the resource potential of the entire population. Supervised clusters of spacecraft will operate simultaneously within a broadly defined framework of goals to select targets (>1000) from among available candidates and to develop scenarios for studying targets simultaneously. Spacecraft use solar sails to fly directly to asteroids 1 kilometer or greater in diameter. Selected swarm members return to Earth with data, replacements join the swarm as needed. We would like to acknowledge our students R. Watson, V. Cox, and F. Olukomo for their support of this work.
Clark Pamela E.
Crawford H.
Curtis Scott
Iyengar Janardhan
Rilee M.
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