E-scheduling the Deep Space Network

Anticipated growth in demand for NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) and its services has created a need to streamline the delivery of telecommunications services. The process for scheduling services is a key component of the interface between mission customers requesting telecommunication support for their spacecraft and DSN providers managing the ground system (antennas). The scheduling process can be viewed as a reservation system for reserving tracking time (known as "tracks") for space missions. The current scheduling process has evolved into a complex, assembly line operation in which different paper-based, file based, and manual systems are used to pass the schedule between different organizations. This paper describes an operations concept for electronic scheduling and software interface for organizations to extract required views of the schedule. Advantages include widespread accessibility to a common schedule document, virtually instantaneous distribution of new schedule releases, and the ability of missions to perform conflict resolution off-line without time-consuming meetings. The operations concept and e-scheduling tool are under development and testing for three scheduling organizations within the Telecommunications and Mission Operations Directorate at JPL. Observations relevant to the deployment of an e-scheduling operations concept are described.