1Strategies and Techniques for Automation as Implemented in EO-1 Flight Operations

program to begin an Extended Mission operations phase. The Extended Mission seeks to maximize the infusion of EO-1 technology through increased utilization of the satellite and reduce the cost of operations through a Continuous Improvement Program (CIP). A key objective of the CIP is to reduce operations costs by increasing automation use. The three-person EO-1 Flight Operations Team (FOT) is responsible for four main tasks: flight dynamics processing, mission planning, real-time engineering, and engineering analysis. Both automation and meta-automation—using an additional layer of automation to control separate automated processes—are utilized by the FOT. Techniques and strategies for implementing automation are discussed. Criteria are presented to judge the appropriateness of a procedure for automation. They are grouped into categories: ease of implementation, return on investment, and degree of feedback. Factors that affect the design of an automation scheme include: available operating systems, strengths of commercial and in-house tools, tool familiarity, desired error checking structure, and desired nature of operator feedback. Unit testing, acceptance testing, parallel operations, documentation, training, and configuration management are necessary to implement automation in flight operations