NASA Kennedy Space Center Expands Use of Aurora

Stottler Henke has been helping NASA improve the efficiency of its projects and other scheduling challenges since the 1990s. Aurora is an intelligent planning and scheduling system that enables NASA to solve complex scheduling problems much more quickly by encoding and applying sophisticated, domain-independent and domain-specific decision-making heuristics. Overlapping missions at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) that compete for the same resources, as well as, ground rules, safety requirements, and the unique needs of processing vehicles and payloads destined for space; impose numerous complex constraints that must be satisfied by the schedules. Since the equipment and facilities required to carry out these operations are extremely expensive and limited in number, optimal assignment and efficient use are critically important. Aurora’s intelligent planning and scheduling has consistently generated more optimal schedules in every application it has been applied to at KSC. Due to this success KSC has recently awarded Stottler Henke a contract to expand the use of Aurora at KSC so more of the facility can benefit.