Symposium Sustainable space exploration missions Michael G. Hinchey a, *, Roy Sterritt b , Christopher A. Rouff c a Loyola College in Maryland, Department of Computer Science, Baltimore, MD 21210, USA b University of Ulster, Computer Science Research Institute, Jordanstown, Ireland c Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories, Arlington, VA, USA Available online 3 May 2009 Since man first walked on the Moon in 1969, we have been anticipating the greater exploration of space, and for human space travel to become commonplace. That latter goal may still be a long way off, but current visions for the next 10–30 years include the establishment of bases on the Moon and eventual manned missions to Mars [1]. This vision requires sustainable space capabilities [2], with reusable missions having longevity in space, with lifetimes in excess of 10 years, and able to complete their missions in a timely manner even in the face of compromise by attack or accident [3,4]. The case has been well presented in the literature for the need not only to create self-managing systems, due to the inherent complexity problem, but also to provide the way forward in enabling future pervasive and ubiquitous computation and communications. It is our belief that future space exploration missions will of necessity exploit principles of Autonomic Computing (or other similar initiatives, such as Organic Computing) in order to achieve self-management, and that new paradigms of computation, such as swarm technologies [5], will be paramount in ensuring survivability in space [6]. Autonomic Computing, which has become mainstream with the advent of IBM’s 2001 manifesto [7], takes inspiration from the mammalian autonomic nervous system, which provides many of the necessary functions to ensure the body is protected from external forces which may cause it harm (the sympathetic nervous system) and to ensure its long-term health through continual monitoring and realignment (the parasympathetic nervous system) all entirely without the conscious knowledge of the body. IBM proposed four initial properties—self-configuration, self-healing, self-optimizating and self-protecting—necessary to qualify as an Autonomic System. This list has since grown, bringing about the general term self-ware or self-*; yet these four initial self-managing properties along with the four enabling properties: self-aware (of internal capabilities and state of the managed component), self-situated (environment and context awareness), self-monitor and self-adjust (through sensors, effectors and control loops), cover the general goal of self-management [8]. The premise is that the sustainable need for survivable properties such as resistance, recognition and recovery (Fig. 1) can be provided through autonomic techniques. ANTS (Autonomous Nano Technology Swarm) is a concept NASA mission [9]. In one of its sub-missions, Prospecting Asteroid Mission (PAM), illustrated in Fig. 2, it is envisaged that a transport ship, launched from Earth, will travel to a point in space where gravitational forces on small objects (such as pico-class spacecraft) are all but negligible. From this point, termed a Lagrangian, 1000 spacecraft, which will have been assembled en route from Earth, will be launched into the asteroid belt. It is expected that as much as 6070% of them will be lost during the mission, primarily because of collisions with each other or with an asteroid during exploration operations, since, having only solar sails to provide thrust, their ability to maneuver will be severely limited. Because of their small size, each spacecraft will carry just one specialized instrument for collecting a specific type of data from asteroids in the belt. Approximately 80% of the spacecraft will be workers that will carry the specialized instruments (e.g., a magnetometer or an X-ray, gamma-ray, visible/IR, or neutral mass spectrometer) and will obtain specific types of data. Some will be coordinators (called leaders) that have rules that decide the types of asteroids and data the mission is interested in and that Futures 41 (2009) 572–574 * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: mhinchey@loyola.edu (M.G. Hinchey), r.sterritt@ulster.ac.uk (R. Sterritt), crouff@atl.lmco.com (C.A. Rouff). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Futures journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/futures 0016-3287/$ – see front matter ß 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2009.04.012