Enabling Integrated Spacecraft Simulation and the Evolutionof JPL’s Concurrent Engineering Environment

The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Innovation Foundry ldquo;works with internal and external JPL partners to bring their space mission ideas, from the initial concept, all the way to a complete proposal package, targeting an opportunity for flight.rdquo;nbsp;nbsp;Over the last 25 years and with the institutional knowledge gained through their extensive experience - the Innovation Foundry has developed extremely capable and highly customized modeling and analysis software infrastructure.nbsp;The Innovation Foundry has been doing ldquo;digital engineeringrdquo; for many years and well before that term became prevalent. In these facilities, the pace required to conceptualize, model, simulate, and analyze complex space systems for early-stage work has led to the development of custom tools analogous to those that are now being deployed across entire organizations to support full-lifecycle digital engineering. This leads to challenging decisions regarding whether to transition to broader and newer tools or to stay with heritage toolsnbsp;for which there may be a viable commercial or open-source alternative. A flexible, scalable interfacing mechanism between existing internal infrastructure and new digital engineering technologies is required to enable the combination of these capabilities and graceful evolution of JPLrsquo;s concurrent engineering environment.The Open Model-Based Engineering Environment (OpenMBEE) is an open-source collaborative engineering system.nbsp;Integration of the existing JPL concurrent engineeringnbsp;infrastructure with OpenMBEE will efficiently support this gradual evolution of the JPL concurrent engineering environment that is consistent with the state-of-the-art and positioned to keep up through community contributions. This integration will also enable connections to the Sedaro Satellite platform for unified spacecraft simulation - enabling more mature concepts through integrated, high-fidelity simulation and analysis.nbsp;