Pinta(OnWeb) setting sail for Martian moon Phobos – Establishing the Mission Planning System for the MMX Rover IDEFIX

Abstract

IDEFIX will be the first rover landing on the Martian moon Phobos, where it will be delivered as part of the JAXA mission MMX. As the Mission Planning tool for the preplanning and detailed planning of the rover operations, the recent-generation generic planning tool PintaOnWeb was chosen. This tool has been developed and is under ongoing further development at DLR’s German Space Operations Center (GSOC). Like its predecessor Pinta, PintaOnWeb and its basic components, the Reactive Planning framework and the Plains library, are generally used within GSOC for Earth-orbiting missions and the planning and scheduling of ground-based assets as the core building blocks for semi- and fully-automated applications. For the application of PintaOnWeb within the MMX IDEFIX mission, as for any other project, the know-how of the mission experts has to be combined with the know-how of the Mission Planning specialists to best implement the planning model and configure the components. This ensures smooth, reliable, safe and convenient manual daily operations by the rover specialists. The collaborative, interactive planning will then be performed outside GSOC by personnel from two agencies, CNES and DLR/MUSC, in Toulouse and Cologne, with interfaces to JAXA. In this paper, the challenges of the IDEFIX MPS, the solutions we found and the benefits we can provide to this mission as well as other projects that are implemented in parallel, will be addressed. It will present the overall architecture and design and will also show the implementation of certain crucial features, such as the modelling of rover activities and resources, and data transfer flows. Additionally, insight into how a slim agile development approach was established and how this helps to meet the demands of all involved parties will be provided. The paper is also going to discuss how the tool, along with the development and support approach, will bring advantages for the upcoming phases of the mission, let it be the finalization of the pre-planning, cruise phase findings, perhaps large-scale short-term rearrangements after the agreements on landing site and date, and then the weekly and daily intense day & night operations for the rover on Phobos by the teams in Cologne and Toulouse.