List of Figures 5 Preface and Acknowledgments 6 List

The thesis objective is to design an autonomous spacecraft architecture to perform both deliberative and reactive behaviors. The Autonomous Small Planet In-situ Reaction to Events (ASPIRE) project uses this architecture to integrate several autonomous technologies for a comet orbiter mission. This architecture uses the deliberative path for performing deliberative behaviors, and the three bypass paths for performing reactive behaviors. The deliberative path subsumes the three bypass paths when it has time to handle events. The three bypass paths are used to provide faster response time. The ASPIRE project shows that the deliberative path can handle all the deliberative behaviors required by the mission, although, the three bypass paths for handling reactive behaviors are not implemented in the project. Finally, this thesis describes several good design and implementation elements. Thesis Supervisor: Patrick H. Winston Title: Professor, Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Thesis Supervisor: Arvind Title: Charles W & Jennifer C Johnson Professor