RESPONSE DUE NLT COB, 5:00 PM, EST 16 SEPTEMBER 2019

INTERAGENCY SPACE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIP FORUM

TECHNICAL INTERCHANGE MEETING: TRUSTED AUTONOMY OF SPACE SYSTEMS

October 8-9, 2019

NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC

Who: The Interagency Space Science and Technology Partnership Forum (S&T Partnership) is an informal body for the purpose of coordinating science and technology issues across the space agencies of the United States Government in order to more efficiently and effectively manage science and technology resources. The goal of the S&T Partnership is to leverage synergies and influence portfolios across space agencies in areas deemed pervasive and ready for collaboration. The principal partners of the S&T Partnership are the United States Air Force, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Reconnaissance Office. This event is open to U.S. citizens, U.S.-owned companies, U.S. Institutions, and U.S. investors with a special focus on companies and academia working in Trusted Autonomy with potential applications for Space and federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs).

What: Technical Interchange Meeting focused on Trusted Autonomy of Space Systems

•·         Trusted Autonomy means that autonomy technology has sufficient maturity, has sufficient integrity, and has been certified for mission-critical use.

•·         Trusted Autonomy requires maturing a range of technologies (situation and self-awareness, reasoning and acting, collaboration and interaction, engineering and integrity) and developing a strategy for interoperability, reusability, & sustainability.

•·         Trusted Autonomous System is like any other trusted product.  We trust/use/rely on a product because it performs its functions as expected. For autonomous systems, this is a simple statement that includes a great deal of functional complexity on how to achieve such behavior.

•·         Autonomy is the ability of a system to achieve goals while operating independently of external control. Autonomy is not the same as artificial intelligence (AI), but may make use of AI methods. Autonomy is not the same as automation, but often relies on automation as a building block.

•·         A System is the combination of elements that function together to produce the capability required to meet a need. The elements of a system include all hardware, software, equipment, facilities, personnel, processes, and procedures needed for this purpose. An autonomous system may involve any combination of elements (e.g., humans and machines) and is not limited to "unmanned capability."

•·         Autonomy Technology consists of the elements and methods required to design, build, test, certify, and operate an autonomous system. The purpose of autonomy technology is not primarily about making a system adaptive, intelligent, or smart, but rather to enable a system to achieve goals while operating independently of external control.

When: October 8-9, 2019, 8:00am-5:00 PM.  *Limited seating.  Participants will be notified.  See instructions below.

Where: NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street SW, Washington, DC 20546

Why: The S&T Partnership seeks to identify opportunities for development and demonstration of Trusted Autonomy capabilities for Space Systems that provide mutual benefit to future government and commercial operational space missions by leveraging developments across government, industry, and academia.

The objectives of the S&T Partnership collaboration within the topic area of Trusted Autonomy of Space Systems are:

Objective 1. Identify the activities and expertise among the agencies, industry, and academia to understand how efforts can be leveraged for future collaboration.

Objective 2. Identify less developed areas of Trusted Autonomy and determine how collaborations and partnerships with industry and academia could be leveraged to address these areas.

Objective 3. Identify collaboration opportunities for joint technology development projects among the agencies, industry, and academia.

The purpose of this Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM) is to understand the current state of commercial and academic activity in Trusted Autonomy related systems, capability developments, and applications and how they may fit within the Trusted Autonomy needs of any of the partners. The S&T Partnership is interested in Trusted Autonomy related capabilities and applications that are either currently available or under development, and system developments that can be used to perform or demonstrate Trusted Autonomy.

 The TIM is designed to collect data to satisfy objectives 1 and 2. Post TIM analysis will focus on satisfying objective 3. Therefore, TIM participants can expect to engage in mutual discovery and learning, to interact with leading Trusted Autonomy companies and academia, to learn about government Space Trusted Autonomy needs, and to inform future government developments and capabilities. All information obtained through this TIM will be used to help formulation of S&T Partnership recommendations for collaboration and strategies for future development of Space Trusted Autonomy capabilities.

 Instructions:

Participation is strictly voluntary and all costs associated with participation will be the sole responsibility of the organization.  The Government will not pay for travel or for any costs associated with submission of the completed application package.  Submitting the application package does not guarantee attendance as seating is limited.  The Government will select up to 30 organizations to participate.  No more than two (2) people from each organization may attend.  No future work is guaranteed by participation in this event.

To request participation please provide the following for application consideration.   NOTE: Data collected from submissions and the TIM will be analyzed, categorized, and generalized for public consumption.

Company Name:

Company Address:

Point of Contact Name:

Point of Contact Email Address:

Point of Contact Phone Number:
 

Your submission is limited to two (2) pages as follows:

 Page 1: Briefly describe and map your capabilities to the autonomy taxonomy categories in Figure 1 (below) and state whether they are available or under development related to Trusted Autonomy of Space Systems.

 FIGURE 1: (See attachment for Figure 1) 

Page2: Describe how your capabilities that are currently available or under development can be used to perform or demonstrate Trusted Autonomy of Space Systems for enabling/enhancing/supporting the seven (7) applications (listed below).

 SPACE APPLICATIONS:

•1.       On-Orbit Autonomous Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (e.g. repurposing, maintenance, inspection, system health monitoring, refueling)

•2.       Distributed spacecraft missions (e.g. data and information fusion of sensors, scheduling, planning, communications, on-board processing, intelligent data understanding)

•3.       Spacecraft Protection (e.g. protection from solar storms, predictive anomalies, autonomous anomaly isolation and resolution)

•4.       Autonomous Space Operations (e.g. spacecraft housekeeping, resource management, fault detection and recovery, dormancy/lights out configurations, spacecraft and surface systems)

•5.       Human System Integration for Space Systems (e.g. trustworthiness, crew intervention, division of autonomy)

•6.       Other (e.g. ground based testbeds for space operations, planetary rovers)

•7.       If you are an investor, are you pursuing investments in any of the above areas?

 Please send complete packages to NASA's email: [email protected] with subject line: "TRUSTED AUTONOMY OF SPACE SYSTEMS," by COB 5 PM, Monday, September 16, 2019. Due to time constraints extensions cannot be provided.   

Applicants will be notified of TIM selection by 25 September 19, which will include additional instructions.  Once an applicant is notified of TIM selection, a confirmation must be submitted by 5:00 PM, EST 27 September 2019.  If confirmation is not received by 27 September 2019 (5:00 PM EST), the next organization in line will be notified for potential attendance.