NASA's Earth Observing One Spacecraft (EO-1) has been adapted to host an advanced suite of onboard autonomy software designed to dramatically improve the quality and timeliness of science-data returned from remote-sensing missions. The Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment (ASE) enables the spacecraft to autonomously detect and respond to dynamic scientifically interesting events observed from EO-1's low earth orbit. ASE includes software systems that perform science data analysis, mission planning, and runtime robust execution. In this article we describe the autonomy flight software, as well as innovative solutions to the challenges presented by autonomy, reliability, and limited computing resources.

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The NASA Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, launched on Mar. 12, 2015, is flying four spinning spacecraft in highly elliptical orbits to study the magnetosphere of the Earth. Extensive attitude data is being collected, including spin rate, spin axis orientation, and nutation rate. The paper will discuss the various environmental disturbance torques that act on the spacecraft, and will describe the observed results of these torques. In addition, a slow decay in spin rate has been observed for all four spacecraft in the extended periods between maneuvers. It is shown that this despin is consistent with the effects of an additional disturbance mechanism, namely that produced by the Active Spacecraft Potential Control devices. Finally, attitude dynamics data is used to analyze a micrometeoroid/orbital debris impact event with MMS4 that occurred on Feb. 2, 2016.