Nebula Public Library

Today’s satellites are inherently inflexible and purpose-built for a single mission. In contrast, the community is exploring disruptive approaches towards in-orbit reconfiguration and on-board data processing. One of the most promising approaches is to use COTS components and open source frameworks, which decrease time-to-market and could even increase the pool of developers/users on the satellite.

Main achievement: Development of the first blockchain ecosystem for space system engineering, as a global configuration tool that can model the business logic of concurrent design. Addressing the MBSE challenges of  controlling data exchange and traceability across system development and operations lifecycle.

Results: Two use cases have been successfully implemented

There is an urgent need to assess the levels of plastic pollution in the ocean, to allow for future monitoring and determine the efficacy of any remediation put into force. As a consequence, parallel to in situ observations, there is a growing interest in detecting marine debris using remote sensing satellite and UAV imagery. The Marine Remote Sensing Group (MRSG) at the University of the Aegean is one of the few groups worldwide with in-deep experience in developing artificial plastic debris target structures, in different configurations and polymer composition.

For long-term studies, numerical simulations are at the center of predicting the space debris environment of the upcoming decades. In the scope of the study, the authors present the architecture and proof-of-concept results for a numerical simulation capable of modeling the long-term debris evolution over decades with a deterministic conjunction tracking model in contrast to typically employed Monte Carlo methods. For the simulation, an efficient propagator in modern C++ accounting for Earth’s gravitational anomalies, solar radiation pressure, and atmospheric drag was developed.