Columbia, MD October 2001 -- Interface & Control Systems (ICS) announced a contract award with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in support of the New Millennium Program (NMP) Space Technology 6 (ST6) program.  ICS is currently under contract with the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) to provide the SCL system as the autonomous constellation manager for the TechSat-21 constellation.   The ST6 contract provides an opportunity to integrate the JPL CASPER planning system with SCL, adding another Artificial Intelligence technology to the TechSat-21 cluster.  

ICS’s flagship product, SCL, will provide a Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) solution for executive command and control functions for the Techsat-21 mission. SCL integrates procedural programming with a real-time, automated, rule-based inference engine. The system was designed to operated both on-board a satellite and in the ground station. This combination makes SCL an ideal environment for developing a prototype, which contains the cluster commanding capability required for Techsat-21. 

The TechSat-21 constellation controllers will use SCL as the automation tool for constellation management. The CASPER system, along with the ground-based ASPEN system, will provide a planning toolset that will be integrated with the scheduling, sequencing and monitoring capabilities of SCL, ultimately generating SCL Scripts and Rules. Once compiled, those Scripts and Rules can be dynamically loaded onboard and executed at an absolute or delta time. Scripts can also be scheduled autonomously by CASPER. This infusion of advanced technology will eventually allow SCL the capability to react to goals posted by the CASPER system.

ICS is a privately held company with main offices in Columbia, MD, and Melbourne, FL and Boulder CO. The product development and engineering services firm specializes in the development of real-time, embedded, and autonomous command and control software systems.