Controlling Multiple Satellite Constellations Using the TEAMAgent System

There is an increasing desire in many organizations, including NASA, to use constellations or fleets of autonomous spacecraft working together to accomplish complex mission objectives. Coordinating the activities of all the satellites in a constellation is not a trivial task, however. The TEAMAgent system is being developed under a Phase II SBIR contract from the Surveillance and Control Division of the Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate to address this issue. The TEAMAgent system is an extension of the ObjectAgent software architecture to constellations of multiple spacecraft. The required spacecraft functions for the multiple spacecraft missions have been identified and the use of software agents and multi-agent based organizations to satisfy these functions have been demonstrated. TEAMAgent is presently being ported from Matlab to C++ for implementation on a real-time system.