Reducing Time-to-Orbit Through Full Mission Virtualization

Let face it: getting to orbit has always been difficult, expensive and time consuming, but weren’t digital twins supposed to help?  The promise of using digital twins was that they would, ultimately, streamline the processes to design, manufacture, and operate space vehicles.  But two big problems stood in the way.

First, the capabilities of most digital twins were and are largely limited to modeling a satellite’s  physical movement, making the twin inferior to-and less capable-the physical vehicle.  On-orbit validation is usually necessary, and every design adjustment requires back porting changes into the digital twin, which adds up to more time, more money, and more custom code…and more meetings.

Second system engineers have – out of necessity – taken a hardware-first approach to vehicle design, starting with hardware components and then spending years figuring out how to get them working together.

It’s time to define a new benchmark that describes which capabilities digital twins must have with respect to simulating a single satellite or even a full constellation.