Enabling Astronaut Self-Scheduling using a Robust Advanced Modelling and Scheduling system: an assessment during a Mars analogue mission
This addresses the need for increased crew autonomy in future planetary missions due to communication delays, though it appears incremental as it applies an existing RAMS system to a new domain.
The paper tackled the problem of enabling astronaut self-scheduling for long-duration exploration missions by assessing a decision-support tool called Romie during a Mars analogue mission, finding that it allowed novice planners to model objectives, compute schedules, and adapt to unforeseen events in a realistic simulation.
Human long duration exploration missions (LDEMs) raise a number of technological challenges. This paper addresses the question of the crew autonomy: as the distances increase, the communication delays and constraints tend to prevent the astronauts from being monitored and supported by a real time ground control. Eventually, future planetary missions will necessarily require a form of astronaut self-scheduling. We study the usage of a computer decision-support tool by a crew of analog astronauts, during a Mars simulation mission conducted at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS, Mars Society) in Utah. The proposed tool, called Romie, belongs to the new category of Robust Advanced Modelling and Scheduling (RAMS) systems. It allows the crew members (i) to visually model their scientific objectives and constraints, (ii) to compute near-optimal operational schedules while taking uncertainty into account, (iii) to monitor the execution of past and current activities, and (iv) to modify scientific objectives/constraints w.r.t. unforeseen events and opportunistic science. In this study, we empirically measure how the astronauts, who are novice planners, perform at using such a tool when self-scheduling under the realistic assumptions of a simulated Martian planetary habitat.