SOFIA's challenge: automated scheduling of airborne astronomy observations

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) will require scheduling flights in support of observations proposed by many different investigators. Automation will be crucial to enable efficient and effective scheduling of SOFIA flights. We have designed an automated flight planner (AFP) that accepts as input a set of requested observations, designated flight days, weather predictions and fuel limitations, and searches automatically for high-quality flight plans that satisfy all relevant aircraft and astronomer specified constraints. The AFP can generate one week's worth of flights in tens of minutes of computation time, a feat beyond the capabilities of human flight planners. The rate at which the AFP can generate flights enables a small staff to assess and analyze complex tradeoff's between fuel consumption, estimated science quality and the percentage of scheduled observations