Future AMMOS Plans
AMMOS Vision
AMMOS envisions itself as the premier provider of multimission operations capabilities to the NASA community for all missions within its charter. We will be a highly valued world-class organization that meets science and mission needs with full customer satisfaction. We will partner effectively across the Agency to provide the most efficient solutions for NASA missions and will drive and seamlessly infuse operations-focused technology to meet our objectives.
Specifically:
- AMMOS provides missions with a Mission Operations System that dramatically reduces mission development effort and cost, significantly improves operations efficiency, and reduces risk for flight and ground systems.
- AMMOS enables Principal Investigators to directly, flexibly, and seamlessly interact with their instruments and data from wherever they are located without requiring expertise in mission operations or AMMOS.
AMMOS Architecture Principles
The future state of AMMOS is based on a set of nine key architecture principles intended to guide multimission operations engineering as well as Ground Data System (GDS) solution engineering:
- Primacy of Principles;
- Use of Common Services;
- Customer Focus;
- Learn from Experience;
- Close the Loop;
- Data/Information Visibility, Accessibility, and Understandability;
- Technology/Platform Independence;
- Interoperability; and
- Universality of Data/Information Security.
A summary description of each of these principles is provided below:
- Primacy of Principles means these principles apply to all organizational entities that are responsible for the management and delivery of AMMOS.
- Use of Common Services means AMMOS provides operations capabilities via adaptable, loosely coupled common services. These expose adaptable portions to customers while maintaining key common aspects as part of the multimission system.
- Customer Focus means AMMOS exists in order to provide operations capabilities that enable missions to operate at lower total cost to NASA, while satisfying needs for reliability and performance.
- Learn from Experience means for AMMOS to improve and/or maintain capabilities in the face of imperfection and a changing world, it must be maintained and improved over time. This requires intentional effort to acquire and apply the lessons that experience offers.
- Close the Loop means AMMOS enables closed-loop control of flight assets, including reconciling the reported state of a flight system with science and engineering plans. To enable missions to efficiently and effectively perform planned-to-actual reconciliation, it is necessary to identify, architect, design, build, maintain, and operate elements of the system that respond to this principle.
- Data/Information Visibility, Accessibility, and Understandability means data/information is defined externally to any given user (including software systems or services) and is readily visible, accessible, and understandable to all authorized AMMOS and external partner users, software systems, and services.
- Technology/Platform Independence means AMMOS software systems and its interfaces are architected independent of specific technology choices and therefore can operate on a variety of technology platforms.
- Interoperability means software and hardware conform to defined industry standards (preferably open standards) that promote interoperability for data/information, applications, and technology.
- Universality of Data/Information Security means the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data/information in all components of AMMOS is a first-class concern and not designed into AMMOS software systems and services as an afterthought.
AMMOS System Strategic Goals
This section defines the four primary system goals needed to achieve the AMMOS vision, the motivation for establishing these goals, and key metrics for measuring success over time against these goals. The system roadmap following the goals specifies key milestones and priorities through 2025.
System Goals with Rationale, Drivers, Areas of Focus, and Metrics
Rationale:
- Highly automated systems minimize mission cost. Standard approaches save development and ops cost and reduce risk by providing well-tested common capabilities.
- Standardized processes and procedures reduce duplication of effort for program and mission alike
- Increased modularity minimizes overlap of design and implementation
- Standard common security practices reduce mission cybersecurity risk profile
Drivers:
- Declining planetary science budget
- Growing mission selection uncertainty
- Increasing security threat
Areas of Focus:
- Reduce costs and risk for developing and operating missions
- Standardized processes and procedures for system development, deployment, and operations
- Increased modularity
- Standardized common security practices
- Increase and expand scope of automated testing
- Strengthen AMMOS operational services through increased scope of multimission team capabilities and operational services
Metric:
- Mission cost for areas where AMMOS tools and services are employed
Rationale:
- Today's AMMOS supports many missions and can continue to support future missions. Ensuring the AMMOS systems are maintained and improved over time allows NASA to readily compose a system at a lower cost and risk because of the availability of flight-tested capabilities.
- Improving AMMOS heritage allows increased cost and risk reduction
Drivers:
- Declining planetary science budget
- Growing mission selection uncertainty
- Increasing security threat
Areas of Focus:
- Exploit emerging standards and computing and networking technologies
- Reduce security risk by adoption of security standards
- Integration with and use of third-party solutions
Metric:
- AMMOS development cost
Rationale:
- AMMOS is NASA's recommended provider of multimission tools and services for missions exploring our solar system and beyond. Broad mission adoption requires AMMOS to provide mission operations-driven capabilities coupled with ease of adaptation and deployment.
- Providing capabilities currently not included in the AMMOS enables the AMMOS to more effectively support mission operations.
- Future mission challenges imply a need for an AMMOS that is a less human intensive enterprise, i.e., one that is significantly easier to adapt and deploy, and one that transitions functionality from the ground to space.
Drivers:
- Increase in data volumes and data rates
- Maturation and infusion of operations-focused technology
- Emerging markets and partnerships
- Growing mission selection uncertainty
Areas of Focus:
- AMMOS provides pre-packaged / integrated out-of-the-box solutions with near immediate usability or functionality
- Support increased data volumes and data rates
- Support greater latency in data receipt and on-board knowledge
- Support increased flight autonomy
Metrics:
- New types and classes of missions supported
- Increase in AMMOS adoption at NASA Centers and elsewhere
Rationale:
- Reduces duplicate functionality across the system
- Helps flight projects lower operations cost by alleviating the need to create custom, mission-unique information/data management and integration capability
- Facilitates end-to-end information/data accountability because currently individual missions implement this capability in piecemeal and inefficient ways
- Provides partner suppliers with an interoperable technical infrastructure to bring new functionality to AMMOS. Although AMMOS offers tremendous value to missions as a reusable asset base of mission operations capabilities, assembling a comprehensive working system is more difficult than it should be
- AMMOS needs to be bound by a set of core architecture principles and the system architected to exhibit a unified "family of systems" as opposed to a collection of subsystem stovepipes
Drivers:
- Declining planetary science budget
- Increasing security threat
- Emerging markets and partnerships
Areas of Focus:
- Common information integration and exchange services
- Common utility services including security, workflow, logging, notification, and system-wide administration, product / data accountability reporting
Metric:
- System integration time and cost for missions employing AMMOS
To Contribute to AMMOS
The Multimission Ground System and Services Office (MGSS) is continually searching for innovative ways to improve AMMOS and is interested in hearing:
- Ideas to improve current tools and services of AMMOS
- Needs for new capabilities in support of future NASA missions
- Existing tools or services that MGSS could subscribe to in support of multiple NASA missions
- Ongoing research and technology that has the possibility of infusion into AMMOS
If you can contribute to any of the above, please visit Contribute to AMMOS or contact the MGSS Strategic Planning Manager Jody Gunn at johanna.m.gunn@jpl.nasa.gov or the AMMOS Technology Manager Jay Wyatt at e.jay.wyatt@jpl.nasa.gov.