Leveraging middleware-based infrastructure for remote exploration

Middleware can improve the capability of business and science applications by providing “standard” shared services to reduce the complexity or increase the capability of every participating application. Successful examples of this approach (such as multitier client/server and more recent portal-based architectures) have fueled the growth of "enterpriselevel" applications, providing better integration and more rapid adaptability of business in many fields. Unfortunately, science and engineering application development has not kept pace with evolving middleware techniques, especially in aerospace and defense systems, partly due to the complexity, criticality, and length of the system lifecycle for such systems (typically many years). We are therefore attempting to reap some of the benefits of middlewarebased application development for Remote Exploration, by proposing development of evolvable services to enable the building of enhanced mission applications more simply. This paper describes middleware systems developed at JPL, shows how leveraging middleware implementation strategies can facilitate building a mission operations system for managing multiple interacting missions on Mars, and proposes an approach to implementing demonstrations as part of a roadmap providing progressively more intelligent remote exploration.