NASA@Google: Jeremy Frank on The Autonomous Mission Operations Project

Calling technical support is always a frustrating experience. Imagine how much more frustrating it would be if the other party answered each question you asked with ever increasing delay. During a future NASA mission to Mars, this is exactly what will happen when astronauts call Mission Control ... and the delays grow up to 40 minutes!

In this talk, I will describe the business of human spaceflight mission operations, and how time delay impacts these operations. I will then give an overview of NASA's Autonomous Mission Operations (AMO) project, which is investigating how to mitigate the impact of time delay on operations. Doing so requires a combination of operations protocols (for instance, who is allowed to make an ""interplanetary tech support call"") and technologies. Many of these technologies are familiar to us Earthlings (Web browsers, calendars, and chat tools) while others are less so (diagnostics tools, displays for procedures, and automation).

Dr. Jeremy Frank is Group Lead of the NASA Ames Planning and Scheduling Group, which designs and builds space mission operations tools. Dr. Frank has an MS and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California (Davis). He also has a BA in Mathematics from Pomona College. Dr. Frank is the Principal Investigator of the Autonomous Mission Operations (AMO) Project, a NASA Advanced Exploration Systems Program project that develops advanced technology prototypes for mission operations in the presence of large time delays. He has received over twenty NASA awards, including a Silver Snoopy (the Astronaut's Personal Award).