IFAP Plans Activities Aboard the International Space Station

Customer

NASA

Need

NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) is responsible for scheduling the flight activities of the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. In the past, much of the scheduling for Space Shuttle missions had been carried out manually. However, the International Space Station operates continuously and requires the planning and scheduling of many more activities. Thus, NASA-JSC needed tools to automate the scheduling of International Space Station assembly and operations.

Solution

Stottler Henke developed the Intelligent Flight Activity Planner (IFAP) that assists both a high-level planning and detailed scheduling. Several weeks before the activity performance period, NASA planners use the high-level planning component to assign flight activities to specific days. User-definable metrics enable the planners to quantify the risks of each plan. In the days before the activity performance period, planners use IFAP to convert the high-level plan into a detailed schedule which specifies for each activity the specific resources to be utilized and the exact execution time. Planners control the automated scheduling process by selecting from a list of intelligent heuristics. The IFAP scheduling engine uses Stottler Henke’s intelligent entities technology to control the detailed scheduling.

Status

IFAP has been integrated into NASA’s Consolidated Planning System which is used operationally in Mission Control for Space Shuttle and International Space Station planning and scheduling.

Related Applications

Stottler Henke’s artificial intelligence-based planning and scheduling technology can be applied to other complex planning and scheduling problems such as those encountered in manufacturing, facility utilization, construction scheduling, and complex project management.