Lance Page
Software Engineer, Autonomous Mission Control Group
Planner Lead, XSS-11
 As a thesis supervisor for three MIT graduate students in the past few years, Lance Page shared his experience
enthusiastically. “I really enjoy guiding students through the thesis research process,” says Page. “Working on my Ph.D.
in computer and systems engineering at RPI, I had the chance to help integrate a variety of technologies into a robotic
assembly system for NASA, while pursuing my thesis research in depth. That’s the kind of team-oriented, problem-solving
research environment that we offer students at Draper.”
Since joining Draper in 1999, Page has applied his expertise in planning, estimation, and control to autonomous
submarines, ground rovers, helicopters, and satellites. Launched in April 2005, the XSS-11, weighing approximately
100 kg, demonstrated a new class of low-cost micro spacecraft intended to explore future military space applications.
“We worked with our XSS-11 teammates to create new ways to operate a satellite. With Draper’s expertise in autonomy,
we wanted to show autonomy works, it can make a satellite easier to operate, and it can make new satellite missions
possible,” says Page.
For XSS-11, Draper developed the onboard Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO) Planner. It encapsulated new
guidance algorithms for long-range satellite RPO maneuvers and incorporated activity decomposition and planning
algorithms in a closed-loop, hierarchical control architecture based on Draper’s ADEPT™ methodology.
“Ideally, autonomy helps the user to focus on the mission—not on details of the vehicle’s systems or on managing the
automation,” explains Page. “It provides capabilities that are infeasible to provide by ground control, whether due to
timeliness constraints or communication limitations. XSS-11 was a unique opportunity to develop and fly a flexible,
responsive, mission-level autonomy capability for a space vehicle.” |
