Tuesday, June 22, 2021

14:00 - 14:30

GNC - Virtual Room 1

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Details

Abstract: Along with its spacefaring international partner agencies NASA has a common interest in the development and application of Autonomous Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GN&C) technologies for its next-generation missions, both for human and scientific exploration, in Earth orbit, in Cis-Lunar space, Lunar orbit, and in deep space flight regimes across the solar system. Many of these future NASA missions will have demanding new requirements for onboard autonomy, optimization, adaptation, and reliable fault tolerant operations. A noteworthy example is the need for adaptive guidance to optimize aerodynamic and propulsion performance during planetary Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL). The NASA GN&C community of practice needs to understand, and learn how to combine and infuse, multiple relevant on-going technology trends, such as Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, to be able to synthesize a new generation of space platforms/vehicles with first-of-a-kind capabilities for autonomous decision making. This talk will highlight, from the NASA perspective, the drivers for Autonomous GN&C describing the overall benefits of and challenges for architecting, developing, and certifying the reliability of these next-generation spacecraft employing advanced perception, autonomous navigation, adaptive flight control and maneuver/motion planning capabilities. Bio: Mr. Cornelius (Neil) Dennehy joined NASA in 2000 as the Assistant Chief for Technology for the Guidance, Navigation and Control Division at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Since 2005 he has served as the NASA Technical Fellow for Guidance, Navigation and Control (GN&C) providing stewardship for the GN&C discipline across NASA. He is a member of the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) organization where he provides technical leadership for independent test and analysis, risk assessment and problem resolution for NASA’s GN&C engineering discipline issues and anomalies. He also serves as the lead for the NASA Technical Fellow Office with the NESC organization. A long time ago he received a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the S.M. degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.