How does Remote Agent enable missions to take advantage of unexpected science opportunities?
Although many great scientific discoveries are made by looking for something specific, many are also made by accident. In the past, space missions were preprogrammed with exactly when, how, and where they were going to collect information. Remote Agent, on the other hand, has the potential generate and execute flexible plans. The hope is that in the future Remote Agent will be able to react to unexpected, interesting phenomena that it encounters in space. For example, an asteroid may pass that is giving off uncharacteristic radiation. Remote Agent could incorporate some observations into its current plan to take advantage of this opportunity. Because there are large windows of time within which EXEC can carry out the tasks of the original plan, EXEC can command the spacecraft to take pictures of the asteroid and still have time to continue with the original plan as scheduled. This ability would greatly expand the opportunity for scientific discoveries in deep space.
