3D Satellite Builder

The Air Force is developing new approaches to the Rapid Response or Rapid Fielding of small spacecraft such as Road Runner and DSX which represent an aggressive approach to developing and launching satellites in a short period of time. Road Runner is aimed at developing a spacecraft from concept baseline to launch readiness in under 14 months with the ability to deploy the spacecraft from storage to full on-orbit functionality in 7 days. The current research is aiming at being even more aggressive where a spacecraft could be designed, developed, integrated, tested and launched within 6-7 days. Star Technologies Corporation proposes to develop a "3D Satellite Builder" that provides (1) a flexible Plug-n-Play software architecture for prototyping of subsystems such as the Electrical Power Subsystem (EPS), the Propulsion Subsystem (PS), Flight Computer System (FCS) or the Attitude Determination and Control Subsystem (ADACS) using hardware components such as batteries, solar cells, attitude sensors and actuators; (2) the ability to swap hardware components with equivalent software emulators in a real-time ?Integration & Test? environment; (3) 3D Visualization User Interface (UI) in support of spacecraft design, development, and testing.