THE TECHNOLOGY

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AMOCS — Autonomous Mission Operations and Coordination System — is not a simulation platform. It is the operational execution layer that sits between asset-level autonomy and human mission control, coordinating actual assets in real time across multiple space domains simultaneously.

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When a solar storm degrades relay signal quality while Rover-1 approaches a battery-critical threshold during an active EVA, while an orbital conjunction warning is active for two cislunar assets — AMOCS detects all three conditions simultaneously, resolves conflicts according to priority-weighted rules, executes or escalates the coordinated response, and updates the 60-minute predictive forecast. All within milliseconds. All while preserving operator authority over every high-risk decision.

 

Seven Core Capabilities:

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1. Real-Time Constraint Reasoning

Priority-based conflict detection across multiple conflict types: power budget oversubscription, relay bandwidth saturation, battery criticality, communications blackout, task zone collision, and trajectory conjunction. Sub-5ms evaluation across multi-agent fleets. Autonomous resolution for LOW-risk conflicts. Escalation to operator with structured recommendation for MEDIUM and HIGH-risk decisions.

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2. Communication-Constrained Autonomy

Every decision accounts for the lightspeed delay between Earth and the operational domain. The graduated autonomy model scales automatically with distance — from Recommend mode in LEO (0.1 second delay) to Full Autonomy at Mars (3 to 22 minutes). Stored command execution during blackout periods. Autonomous coordination continues when the link is down. Command queue with IN_TRANSIT and ACKNOWLEDGED states tracks every uplinked instruction.

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3. Graduated Human-Autonomy Teaming

Three operational modes — Monitor Only, Recommend, and Supervised Autonomy — produce measurably different autonomy rates across identical fault scenarios. Operators calibrate oversight level to mission phase, communication delay, and risk tolerance. Every autonomous decision is logged with timestamp, risk level, and execution status. Every operator approval or rejection is recorded alongside the AI recommendation that triggered it — a complete audit trail for every consequential decision.

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4. Predictive Digital Twin

60-minute time-stepped forward simulation projects battery depletion, communications quality, hazard proximity, and mission success probability. Operators see failures before they happen. Scenario-based rehearsal validates system response to solar storms, relay failures, battery faults, and nominal operations. The Mission Planner uses the same digital twin engine for pre-mission preflight analysis.

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5. Mission Planner with Environmental Preflight

Operators enter departure base, destination, waypoints, and dwell time. AMOCS calculates time of flight, distance, battery budget, and bingo time — the latest possible departure to guarantee safe return. A full environmental threat assessment runs automatically: space weather (Kp index and solar radiation), micrometeorite flux, galactic cosmic ray levels, NEO conjunction status, and route hazard zone intersection using precise line-segment geometry. The system produces a GO, CAUTION, or NO-GO recommendation with success probability and a list of specific warning flags before any asset moves.

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6. Trajectory Collision Advance Warning System (TCAWS)

TCAWS runs continuously in the background, projecting all surface and orbital asset positions forward in time to detect potential conjunctions before they occur. Three threat categories: surface-to-surface asset convergence, trajectory-based hazard zone approach (detecting that a rover's current heading will enter a hazard zone before it gets there), and orbital conjunction between assets sharing similar orbital parameters. Warnings surface immediately in the Action Queue with operator approval and rejection options. A red indicator appears in the top status bar when active conjunctions are pending.

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7. Autonomous Rendezvous, Proximity Operations & Docking Computes real launch-window and transfer-orbit solutions using a Lambert universal-variable solver, resolving the full departure/arrival burn geometry rather than approximating it. Burn vectors are decomposed into radial, along-track, and cross-track components in the local orbital frame and presented as pitch/yaw steering commands on an aircraft-style attitude director (ADI) flight display — the same "fly the needles to center" convention used in cockpit flight directors. Proximity operations and final approach are modeled with Clohessy-Wiltshire relative-motion dynamics, with waypoint-gated autonomous docking sequences and a live V-bar/R-bar tracking display. A multi-factor sensor-fusion module performs autonomous asset identification before docking authorization is granted.

 

How AMOCS Fits the Stack:

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AMOCS sits at the coordination layer — above asset autonomy, below human mission control, interoperable with the emerging space communications and situational awareness infrastructure:

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• ABOVE — Human mission control and simulation platforms (Sedaro, OpenMCT). AMOCS feeds aggregated state and decision summaries upward.

• AMOCS — Real-time coordination, constraint resolution, human-autonomy teaming, digital twin, mission planning, trajectory warning.

• BELOW — Asset autonomy (AEGIS, ICAROUS) and flight software (cFS, RTEMS). AMOCS receives telemetry and sends coordinated commands downward.

• NASA LunaNet — Lunar communications and navigation infrastructure. LunaNet provides the network. AMOCS provides the mission intelligence layer riding on top of it.

 

SpaceX Stargaze — Space situational awareness data feed. Stargaze detects conjunctions. AMOCS converts that data into operator-ready decision packages.

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