Background
The NASA Rapid Spacecraft Development Office (RSDO) Rapid IV Catalog now includes two SwRI spacecraft, the SwSP-35 and SwSP-100 shown in Figures 1 and 2. Since spacecraft listed within this catalog are expected to be developed quickly, there is a need for more agile approaches to rapid prototyping, development, and testing.
Figure 1: SwSP-35 SwRI Spacecraft in NASA Rapid IV RSDO Catalog.
Figure 2: SwSP-100 SwRI Spacecraft in NASA Rapid IV RSDO Catalog.
Approach
Our research objective for this project is to create digital twins for the SwSP-35 and SwSP-100 spacecraft capable of running the flight software in a meaningful scenario.
The project is divided into two phases. Phase 1 initiates the project with a survey and comparison of selected open source and commercial tools. The remainder of Phase 1 and Phase 2 will develop digital twins for the SwRI entries in the Rapid IV Catalog. Phase 1 will develop a digital twin for the SwSP-35; Phase 2 will develop a digital twin for the SwSP-100.
In each phase, we will first build an application-layer bridge followed by a low-level hardware virtualization. Each step represents an increasing level of complexity and model fidelity.
Accomplishments
Accomplishments In Phase 1:
- We completed the initial tool study and selected NASA 42, Renode and Verilator.
- We completed modeling of the SwSP-35 at the application-bridge level using NASA 42 and Attitude Determination & Control Software (ADCS).
- We successfully tested the model in sun-pointing and nadir-pointing scenarios.
- We implemented hardware virtualization and conducted a higher fidelity test of commanding and the ADCS.