Abstract

ARARA is a space telescope mission concept designed to increase humanity’s ability to detect and characterize rare, fast, and scientifically decisive cosmic events by moving decision-making closer to the sensor. ARARA introduces an onboard early-warning and autonomy layer that jointly monitors instrument stability and target-field dynamics, enabling the spacecraft to recognize time-critical signatures, request cross-confirmation, and allocate observation and downlink resources in real time under limited bandwidth, pointing costs, and noisy conditions. We report a reproducible end-to-end simulation demonstrating closed-loop control of false positives while preserving sensitivity to true events, including harsh operational scenarios (telemetry gaps, saturation, pointing jitter, and spurious instrument disturbances). By enabling earlier capture of transient onset and rapid state transitions, ARARA can accelerate discovery in time-domain astrophysics and improve coordination with ground and space networks. Beyond astrophysics, the architecture provides a general template for autonomous scientific spacecraft—reducing dependency on continuous ground intervention, increasing robustness, and maximizing return from limited spaceborne resources, which ultimately strengthens society’s long-term scientific and technological capability.