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Responsive Space. Is it a ‘technology’ worthy of the AIAA’s attention? Ronald Kohl. Background. The Strategic Technology Coordination (STC) group, who reports to TAC, has identified ‘Responsive Space’ as a possible technology of interest to the AIAA
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Responsive Space Is it a ‘technology’ worthy of the AIAA’s attention? Ronald Kohl
Background • The Strategic Technology Coordination (STC) group, who reports to TAC, has identified ‘Responsive Space’ as a possible technology of interest to the AIAA • The STC wants to determine if there is sufficient interest to warrant the formation of an ‘official group’ devoted to this topic within AIAA (e.g. WG, TC, PC, etc) • To do so, they have asked me to lead an effort to determine if there is a community of interest within AIAA and if that community of interest thinks that an ‘official group’ should be formed to address this topic. • The possible outcomes of this effort are: • No or very little interest or community – drop it or put on ‘watch list’ • Definite community of interest but not sufficient to create ‘official group’ – forming informal community until such time as a more formal group is appropriate • Sufficient interest and community who support forming an ‘official group’ – recommend forming an ‘official group’.
Responsive Space – what is it? • It is a goal/need/dream/challenge to be attained • Definition: the ability to significantly reduce the time from ‘I need a spacecraft to do X’ to ‘A spacecraft to do X is now operational’. • Description: • This involves reducing 2 major time periods: • time to go from ‘I need a sat’ to ‘completed build/test and ready to launch the sat’ • Time to go from ‘ready to launch a sat’ to ‘ready to start sat Ops’ • Does not have to reduce cost • Should not sacrifice quality • Time reduction goals should be at least one order of magnitude (e.g. months/years to weeks/months)
What to do about it? • Create a definition/description of the problem and the technologies likely to be involved (see previous slide) • Engage AIAA communities of interest to determine both interest and potential activities. • Launch community • Small Sat community • Satellite development community (e.g. h/w, s/w, etc) • I&T community • Payload community • Ground communities (e.g. Ops centers, test centers, etc) • It involves a variety of existing ‘technologies’ that may need to be modified • Shorter ‘time to design/define and identify components’ • Shorter s/w development/test periods • Shorter h/w development or acquisition periods • Other system factors/processes need to be shortened (e.g. payload I&T) • Shorter ‘time to launch’. • Creation of ‘spacecraft apps store’ with high quality h/w and s/w that has already been integrated with other stuff in the Apps Store • Others? • Ultimate goal is to determine if a recommendation to AIAA leadership to form an ‘official’ group is appropriate
Example: Rapid Software (some thoughts) • Currently, mission critical s/w typically incurs the full spectrum of good s/w engineering processes • Complying with these ‘good s/w engineering processes’ takes some/much time (e.g. months, years) • What could we do differently? • Reduce time devoted to some/all of these good s/w engineering processes • This option has been shown to increase risk of s/w quality • Build a ‘Spacecraft Apps Store’ • Apply full s/w engineering processes to s/w as part of acceptance into Apps Store, no matter how long it takes • Then have high quality s/w ‘on the shelf’ to be used in very short order • USAF’s ORS project is embracing this concept • Innovative, challenging and never tried before, for mission critical apps
Example: Rapid Sat Design (some thoughts) • Currently, satellite design takes a long time • Going from Ops Concept to Arch to Design to components takes time • Involves many stakeholders • Sometimes a ‘cumbersome’ review/approval process? • What could we do differently? • Design a tool that automates subsystem and component selection and interoperatiblity • Take a set of satellite requirements • Offer a menu of ‘options’ to satisfy each requirement • Ensure components are readily available (e.g. nearby, on the shelf, etc) to be assembled • Ensure selected components are already ‘interoperable’ • Ensure ‘rapid I&T’ to validate satellite design, assembly
Open questions • There are probably more such technologies related to this goal and may require some outreach to a broad space community (e.g. SMG/TAC, USAF, NASA, commercial launchers, etc) • There are concerns about shortening this timeline while retaining the traditional ‘mission critical’ quality of space systems. • If you try to shorten the s/w dev/test processes, you may be skipping or reducing key software engineering processes • Shortening systems integration/test may allow undetected errors/faults to remain in a ‘ready to launch’ space system • What would be the best ‘official group’ to form if that makes sense? • WG, TC, PC, other?