Reconfigurable Satellite Planning Tool

It takes up to 10 years to design, build and launch a satellite system. The satellite system reflects the 10-year-old (or more) outdated, inflexible technology and mission needs that may no longer be applicable to the tactics and geography of today’s evolving conflicts. These new conflicts create the need for mission changes that cannot be accommodated by current systems. Recent advances in technology offers us opportunities to incorporate reconfigurable components (e.g., radiation-hardened FPGAs, Software Reconfigurable Payloads) into spacecraft that allow for the new satellite to change their missions. DNet is proposing to modify its Mission-Satellite Design Tool (MSDT) to address the reconfiguration of satellites based on mission changes. DNet will change the MSDT to a Reconfiguable Satellite Planning Tool (RPST) that will 1) take advantage of the reconfigurability characteristics of deployed satellite and 2) based on mission needs, and determine from an available registry of satellites, the candidate satellite (s) that can fulfill the new mission objectives. The RPST Phase I will demonstrate this ideas with a simple reconfigurable satellite. Phase II will evolve these ideas with multiple satellites with a more advance the tool with an Initial Operational Concept (IOC) version.