Autonomous Control of an In - Situ Propellant Production Plant

Utilization of extraterrestrial resources, or In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), is viewed as an enabling technology for the exploration and commercial development of our solar system. A key subset of ISRU is In-Situ Propellant Production (ISPP), which involves the partially autonomous production of propellants for planetary ascent or Earth return. NASA has scheduled pilot ISPP demonstrations on Mars starting with the 2001 Mars Surveyor Lander, with human Mars mission scenarios as early as 2011. Such automated manufacturing facilities could also be applied to terrestrial space-port systems in the automation of launch vehicle and payload test, checkout and launch operations. Automation would allow for the more efficient use of personnel resources and enhance the safety of safety-critical operations where human intervention would be to slow or undesirable (e.g. situations where system safing would require placing personnel into a hazardous situation).