Swarms in Space Missions - Autonomous and Autonomic Systems - page 204

Fig. 10.3. A picture of a 12-tet rover (image credit: NASA)
to be solved is to scale this model up to one capable of supporting autonomous
operation for a 12-tet rover, a structure realized by the integration of 12 tets in
a polyhedral structure. The overall objective is to achieve autonomous robotic
motion of this structure. Figure 10.3 shows a drawing of a 12-tet rover.
10.2.2 NASA Prospecting Asteroid Mission
The ANTS PAM concept mission [ 31 , 32 , 181 ] would involve the launch of a
swarm of autonomous pico-class (approximately 1 kg) spacecraft that would
explore the asteroid belt for asteroids with characteristics of scientific inter-
est. Figure 10.4 gives an overview of the PAM mission concept [ 176 ]. In this
mission, a transport ship launched from earth would travel to a Lagrangian
point. From this point, 1,000 spacecraft, which would have been assembled en
route from earth, would be launched into the asteroid belt. Each spacecraft
would have a solar sail as the primary means of propulsion (using photon
pressure from the Sun's light), supplemented with tiny thrusters to maneuver
independently. Each spacecraft would carry just one specialized instrument
for collecting a specific type of data from asteroids in the belt. With onboard
computational resources, each spacecraft would also have artificial intelligence
and heuristics systems for control at the individual and team levels. For com-
munications, spacecraft would use low bandwidth to communicate within the
swarm and high bandwidth for sending data back to earth. It is expected that
60-70% of the spacecraft would be lost during the mission, primarily because
of collisions with each other or with asteroids during exploration operations,
since their ability to maneuver will be severely limited.
As Figs. 10.4 and 10.5 show, teams would consist of members from three
classes of spacecraft within the swarm, with members in each class combining