SpaceCAPS: Automated Mission Planning for the TechSat 21 Formation-Flying Cluster Experiment

This paper describes a project concerned with the development of a mission planning system to provide automated planning assistance for the Air Force TechSat 21 formation-flying satellite cluster experiment: Spacecraft Cluster Automatic Planner/Scheduler (SpaceCAPS). The project?s focus is on planning and scheduling for payload management, but the system serves as a central planning system for planning and scheduling of all spacecraft functions. The paper describes some of the planning and scheduling requirements for cluster payload management, and describes a system for optimization of the mission plan for the TechSat 21 space-based radar surveillance system.