Resiliency in Space Autonomy: a Review

Abstract

The article provides an extensive overview on the resilient autonomy advances made across various missions, orbital or deep-space, that captures the current research approaches while investigating the possible future direction of resiliency in space autonomy. In recent years, the need for several automated operations in space applications has been rising, that ranges from the following: spacecraft proximity operations, navigation and some station keeping applications, entry, decent and landing, planetary surface exploration, etc. Also, with the rise of miniaturization concepts in spacecraft, advanced missions with multiple spacecraft platforms introduce more complex behaviours and interactions within the agents, which drives the need for higher levels of autonomy and accommodating collaborative behaviour coupled with robustness to counter unforeseen uncertainties. This collective behaviour is now referred to as resiliency in autonomy. As space missions are getting more and more complex, for example applications where a platform physically interacts with non-cooperative space objects (debris) or planetary bodies coupled with hostile, unpredictable, and extreme environments, there is a rising need for resilient autonomy solutions. Resilience with its key attributes of robustness, redundancy and resourcefulness will lead toward new and enhanced mission paradigms of space missions.