Autonomous trending system for the AIRS/AMSU-A/HSB instruments on the Aqua spacecraft

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU-A), and the Humidity Sounder for Brazil (HSB) instruments were launched aboard NASA's Aqua spacecraft on May 4, 2002 into near-polar Earth orbit with a 1:30 PM ascending equator crossing. The AIRS instrument measures 2,378 infrared and four visible/near-infrared channels, while the 15-channel AMSU-A and four-channel HSB instrument provide simultaneous observations in the microwave region from 23.8-89 GHz and 150-189 GHz, respectively. Together these instruments produce thousands of measurements per second for a mission expected to last 7 years. This paper describes the challenges of identifying and monitoring, among the approximately 1,500 available engineering and quality assessment parameters, a representative subset for tracking each instrument's performance. A software system has been developed which autonomously extracts key items from the voluminous project database, performs data analysis and creates web-based daily summary reports with links to these archived results. Independently, a second process autonomously monitors these trending data products and notifies team members by e-mail if parameters exceed their trending-specific monitoring limits. Finally, this paper describes how this system has been used to predict long-term instrument performance trends, investigate previous flight anomalies and maintain the instrument within calibration specifications.