Procedures as a Gateway to Spacecraft Autonomy

This paper examines the role of procedures in operating crewed spacecraft and how procedures can serve as an entry point for spacecraft autonomy. Procedures represent the knowledge necessary to operate a system and are a critical component of crewed spaceflight. Historically, procedures have been executed by humans reading from a piece of paper or a static display. In this paper we describe a new procedure paradigm in which procedures are computer-understandable and can be executed by either humans or computers. This requires new procedure and system representations, development tools, autonomy software and displays. A prototype procedure development and execution system is described and applied to a space station procedure.