Responsive SpaceIs 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?