The space industry will be 1.4 trillion by 2030. 92% of the satellite launched in 2021 were small satellites. The CAGR of Small satellites is 16.4%, which is very high than the Space industry in general because of the low development cost and time, making small satellites a commercially viable product.
Specific challenges that the small satellite industry is facing currently
- Legacy information is in silos.
- Considerable challenges in scalability as any updates will consume both time and resources without any specific result as there is no visibility on how one component interacts with another.
- The current demand for the small satellite industry is to be cost-effective while maintaining high levels of quality and agility, which is very difficult considering we are still using legacy tools that can provide quality or agility but not both.
- Missing multi-domain collaboration as there is no single platform where resources from various disciplines can collaborate and share the work.
All these challenges can be mitigated by using Digital engineering for every phase of the satellite mission lifecycle, starting from planning, resource gathering, asset management, design, testing, analysis, and operations. Through digital engineering platforms such as Sat-PASS (provided by Delta-V Robotics), enterprises can improve collaboration across domains, build more scalable, agile architectures, and understand the interconnection impact of a subsystem on another.
Various benefits of using Digital engineering in satellite missions
- Digital models and algorithms are reusable and updated as a point of departure going forward, saving time and streamlining future processes for design, upgrades and improvements to enhance architecture.
- It enables value-added engineering, which helps lower operating and maintenance costs while enhancing the quality and managing the risk.
- Cloud-based simulation creates a central database for all the data to come and develops a single source of truth for all the domains, inculcates better communication and facilitates smooth collaboration.