7 minute read
A new mission planning mindset for driving mission success
Success in space is definitely hard, but it doesn’t have to be as difficult as a lot of us make it. It’s all in the prep and the mindset. Underestimating the complexities of mission planning and sticking to the status quo –stubbornly relying on a patchwork of legacy tools, outdated analysis software, and manual workflows – is having a stifling effect on emerging capabilities in LEO and their positive impact on life on Earth. Today, though, there are solutions to ensure a mission launched returns as a mission accomplished.
Sanford Selznick, Co-Founder and Chief Software Architect, Ascending Node Technologies
There are hundreds of space missions in the works. Rideshare payloads, satellite builds, breakthrough experiments, rendezvous and docking demos, asteroid mining efforts, small-sat observatory missions, and Earth observation flights are all in various stages of development and deployment.
While access to space has become far more affordable over the last decade, the missions themselves, to LEO and other orbits, are more complex than ever. As missions head to the moon and beyond, the stakes and costs go up exponentially.
Despite all the big investments in spacecraft development and expertise, the metric for success for many missions has been: “we got off the ground!” Now most are overjoyed with simply getting to orbit. The challenge once in orbit, however, is the painful realization that mission teams can’t time and track their science observations accurately, which for most is the core reason for the mission in the first place.
Take Earth observation (EO) for example. More than 1,000 EO satellites are orbiting the Earth today and many will fail to gather the mission critical imagery needed due to miscalculated geometries that cause a camera-system to miss its intended target. A picture is worth a thousand words on an EO flight, but only if the team has the scientific scheduling and processing capabilities to capture and deliver accurate imagery and data within a split-second window from an EO spacecraft scanning across the Earth at kilometers per-second speeds.
Reviewing a recently failed EO mission, we found the timing was off because the math geometric calculations were off. Geometric calculations are performed from dozens of inputs. Everything is moving: the planet, the stars, the sun, the spacecraft itself, the spacecraft’s pointing and attitude, and instrument decks warp – even the onboard clock drifts. There was no single source of truth for the teams to leverage. Everyone was using different versions of the inputs, which ultimately led to the team unknowingly trusting the wrong data.
The target could have been the Sahara Desert, one of the largest land masses on the planet, and this team would have come up empty handed, without a single picture of a single sand dune. Without the ability to execute with millisecond precision, Earth observation crews are left reviewing little more than their afterthoughts in the rearview mirror.
And Earth Observation is just one example. There are countless missions that are missing the mark in space today and coming back to Earth with little to show for the months and years invested.
FROM AFTERTHOUGHT TO TOP-OF-MIND PRE-LAUNCH PREPARATIONS
Surprisingly, many multi-million-dollar missions are being planned and built without collaborative software capable of keeping team members on the same page and appraised of issues, pain points, and upcoming milestones. It can be like flying blind in many ways. Teams are keenly aware of the extraordinary intricacies and details required in building a spacecraft but ensuring that it has the ability to actually carry out its mission is often an afterthought, until later in the development process or, shockingly, once the vehicle and operation is on orbit.
Our team of engineers and scientists on NASA’s historic and complex OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Regolith Explorer) asteroid sample collection mission experienced the frustrations so many are working through today. We relied on a widely used system tool kit as well as time-consuming manual processes to analyze the flight path, anticipate hiccups, and map out the Concept of Operations.
The tool kit, which can be cost prohibitive for most small-sat missions, didn’t allow for a real-time collaborative environment, which is an absolute must for today’s teams with engineers located all over the world. The days of the Apollo missions where everyone’s in the same room (or building) are long past. Space engineers in 2025 need mission management capabilities that keep everyone worldwide on the same page and abreast of every single detail by the second.
As our OSIRIS-REx spacecraft traveled to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu to retrieve rock and dust samples as part of a seven-year exploration, we had struggled through critical phases of the mission with some analysis technologies and a whole lot of manual math calculations from a talented and committed team. We had some of the best engineers in the world on that mission and still had concerning moments that added unnecessary stress on the team during an already stressful time.
By the time asteroid samples were delivered to Earth in 2023, three of us from the OSIRIS-REx operation had founded our company Ascending Node Technologies out of the sheer frustration and realization that there had to be a better way. We had to advance beyond the space industry’s slow, siloed, costly, and often manual data processing practices.
Over the last five years, we’ve developed a visualization software platform that allows hundreds of mission teammates to simultaneously analyze, iterate, and discuss technical challenges and accomplishments at every stage. We can now run through an entire mission, from concept to successful completion, to review the full flight path and discover any potential issues and weak links months, even years before launch. Imagine seeing pixel-perfect simulations of your camera data months before taking the actual picture.
AN ERA OF AWAKENING IN SPACE MISSION MANAGEMENT
Even as cutting-edge space innovations surpass once unimaginable milestones, many of the barriers to success are self-induced obstacles. Egos can certainly get in the way of breakthroughs, and “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” mindsets and risk-averse stances continue to hold back important advancements.
The fact is many mission planning processes are broken and outdated. We have entered, however, an exciting era of awakening in space mission management, as NASA and the space industry at large sees how automation and simulation platforms can de-risk missions – large and small.
Here’s the one question every mission team must answer. What will your instrument see at a precise moment to the millisecond, weeks in advance? To answer that key question accurately and truthfully, whether you’re in a planning stage or in space, a crew must have all of their geometric truth organized, a tough task without the right technology in hand.
We are seeing this firsthand right now, as our team is currently providing continuous flight planning simulations and mission planning capabilities for NASA’s US$20 million Aspera small-sat UV astrophysics telescope operation set to explore nearby galaxies from LEO beginning in 2026. In collaboration with NASA and the University of Arizona, we are enabling teams of engineers to clearly see how the Aspera mission will perform in the future long before the payload is launched into space.
That level of vision offers a crystal-ball-like view into every aspect of a mission, allowing team engineers and scientists to make mission-saving adjustments long before issues arise.
As space companies and government agencies shoot for the moon and breakthrough missions strive to enable a promising space economy from LEO to the lunar surface and beyond, proven intelligent mission management capabilities will be necessary to turn an exciting vision into a successful reality.
