Software Safety Supervision On-board Autonomous Spacecraft

This paper presents a study on dedicated software product assurance measures and dependability techniques to support space on-board autonomous functions. An analysis of current standards and techniques in space and other domains, and a survey of software autonomy projects from the point of view of product assurance, dependability and safety are presented. Product assurance measures are proposed, and the paper concludes with the description of two generic software components developed and experimented to provide additional safety mechanisms in autonomous space systems: a “safety bag” in charge of monitoring on-board a set of safety properties, and a “plausibility checker” complementing on ground the validation means for interpreted procedures before they are uploaded and executed on-board.