Software architecture for autonomous spacecraft

In order to reduce the dependence of the spacecraft on the ground station and cut down the cost of management, an software architecture for autonomous spacecraft was proposed. The architecture was composed of the intelligent planning and scheduling module as well as the command and data handling module. The composition and the software architecture of each module was presented in detail, and the algorithm of the coordination between two modules was given as well. This system integrats traditional real-time monitoring by the ground station and modern controlling by the autonomous system onboard, and can transform to each other expediently. By the analysis of the model operation, the validity of this method was confirmed.