Autonomous On-board Software (AOS) is a complex, mission-critical component within all recent space missions. The growth in the number and functionalities delegated to the software, and the strict requirements on the robustness of the system, call for a step ahead in the software process design. Standard software design and testing have proved to be not enough in many a case, causing either mission loss, or delayed/degraded accomplishment of the mission tasks.

In this paper, we describe a challenging case study provided by the forthcoming LISA Pathfinder mission, a technology demonstration of the joint ESA/NASA cornerstone mission, highlighting the key issues in the software process for this case study, and the contributions that can be provided using state-of-the-art planning, synthesis, and diagnosis techniques.