Flight Planning

In-house software to guide daily data collection

A crucial part of mission operations is ensuring that the instruments take the right scientific data at the right time. LASP’s flight-planning team functions determines where each instrument should point, when it should collect data, and which types of data it should gather.

To keep track of each spacecraft’s schedule, our team uses specialized planning and scheduling software. The software we use the most, which we developed here at LASP, is called the Operations and Science Instrument Support Planning and Scheduling system (OASIS-PS). OASIS-PS is capable of automatically generating operations plans based on rules and constraints programmed into the software or stored in the supporting database. Operations activities can be displayed on a timeline and operators can add, modify, or delete activities from this.

Central to the flight-planning team’s success are our highly trained undergraduate and graduate students, who often lead the daily science-collection requirements and spacecraft events under the supervision of professional staff.