Adapting System-of-systems Engineering for the Advancement of the Mars Exploration Program

Introduction: The current data infrastructure of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission revolves around the availability of communication windows between Earth-based science teams, engineers, etc. With the upcoming 2009 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission and the next-generation planetary missions to Mars this data infrastructure must be modified to account for the large increase and eventual data-rich environment scientists and engineers will be working with in the next 2-3 years. System-of-Systems (SoS) is a methodology for viewing networks of individual systems that are made and act independently but need to function together for a common goal. Concurrently, System-of-Systems Engineering (SoSE) is the implementation of those solutions, tools, and task-oriented groups used to resolve the reconstruction of the original system. The modification of the data infrastructure of MER to fit the future needs of MSL and later missions requires such a methodology to achieve the robust use of resources, time-management, and science team efforts. The purpose of this paper is three-fold: (1) to introduce this adaptation of systems engineering to the MSL data network, (2) show the beneficial implications of group work between science and engineering teams, and (3) to show possible optimization techniques used for future modeling of both SoSE protocols and resource management.