Software Companion: The Mexar2 Support to Space Mission Planners

This paper describes a fielded AI system in daily use at the European Space Agency (ESA-ESOC) since February 2005. The tool, named MEXAR2, provides continuous support to human mission planners in synthesizing plans for downlinking on-board memory data from the MARS EXPRESS spacecraft to Earth. The introduction of the tool in the mission planning workflow significantly decreased the time spent in producing plans. Moreover MEXAR2 improves the quality of the produced plans thus guaranteeing a strong reliability in data return enabling a more intensive science activity on board. The introduction of MEXAR2 has modified the role of the human mission planners who can now evaluate and compare different solutions rather than dedicating their time exclusively to computing single solutions (a tedious and repetitive task which does not capitalize on the mission planners’ decision-making expertise). These characteristics have effectively made MEXAR2 a fundamental work companion for the human mission planners.