Reactive Transition Scheduling for Deep Space Habitats

Deep space exploration is becoming a key focus for space agencies. Given the extended durations and vast distances of these missions, alternating between crewed and uncrewed states will be essential. The transition between those two states will introduce new challenges. During these transitions, numerous actions involving various subsystems must be meticulously coordinated to ensure the safety of both crew and equipment. In case of a disruptive event, the crew may not be able to depend on ground support and must make rapid decisions. When time and resources are limited a reduced set of actions can be executed before the available resources are depleted. Therefore, the transition schedule may need to be continuously adjusted based on recovery strategies, available resources, and the extent of damage to complete as many actions as possible with the available resources. A reactive scheduler is a potential choice for managing these transitions effectively. This paper compares different meta-heuristic and exact scheduling algorithms to identify the most suitable one for reactive transition rescheduling during disruptive events. The problem is formulated as the minimization of the total consumed energy of an action sequence, subject to precedence constraints. Specifically, a scenario with a micrometeorite impact during a transition between dormant and crewed states is used herein to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed reactive scheduler. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the effectiveness of a scheduling algorithm in improving transition flexibility and optimizing resource consumption.