Mission planning on the International Space Station program. Concepts and systems.

This paper attempts to identify the current mission planning process on the International Space Station (ISS) program, to examine the lessons learned through experience and to consider ways forward. In order to accomplish this end, the paper begins by reviewing the experience obtained during operations to date and "lessons learned" gained by the author, former co-lead of the Integrated Planning System Team (ISS Program Office), and then describes a planning-centered approach to long duration mission support and discusses several aspects of the planning process at Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The paper focuses on the following items: Long duration mission planning. Definition and verification of concept viability. MIR, Space Shuttle and ISS programs. Achievements and lessons learned. What can we take from past and current experience to better future projects? Mission planning items, classification, hierarchical data model, and resources management. Integrated Planning System (IPS). Planning a robot component - Mobile Service System (MSS) activity on the ISS program. Latest experience. The principal result of the work are a planning-centered approach for mission planning on the ISS program and particularly the planning of MSS activity as a robot component on the program. Together with a proven unified operational language (Short Term Plan) and a hierarchical planning data structure which are proposed for usage on both pre-mission stage and real-time mission operations the approach is a workable solution for effective mission planning. Demand for future mission development has already been realized. Development of a holistic mission planning business model and eventually a global distributed mission planning system based on the proposed concept and planning data structure as well as on up-to-date tools are the next steps. From a multi-mission program perspective the paper examines key issues and recommends strategies for long duration mission planning to future Mars exploration missions.