Digitalisation is already ubiquitous in the engineering domain. It allows expressing the concept of operation and functionality, structuring and linking requirements, tracking these throughout design and manufacturing up to testing, validation and in-orbit operations. It is intended to support the optimisation of the design, to perform informed trade-offs for interface control. It allows the systems engineers and the project teams to master the complexity of the space system, relying on an authoritative source of truth of the system, communicating knowledge and exchanging data in an unambiguous way. It enables quick access to key parameters via tailorable viewpoint dashboards, understanding and managing the impact of changes and non conformances, building knowledge from lessons learned for optimisation and/or for future reuse. It also allows maintaining a continuous and homogeneous flow of information between the different disciplines of the system, along its life cycle, and across its supply chain.

Besides engineering, project management, control and product assurance are also transitioning to digital, supporting the workflows related to schedule, cost, changes, deviations and non-compliances in an automated, traceable and searchable way. Finally, procurement (and finance) complements the picture with the digitalisation of the steps included in the preparation of the ITT package, management of the resulting contract, deliverables, contract change process and the contract closure, associated to adequate legally compliant processes.

The Digital Spacecraft is to be regarded as a concept rather than a single product, or a particular technology. It includes a combination of methodologies and technologies such as Model Based System Engineering (MBSE), Computer Aided Design (CAD), simulation techniques, Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality (AR/VR/MR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Big Data and various communication, collaboration and project control and management technologies at infrastructure level. It ends up into a reference way of sharing digital data, including digital continuity approaches, data formats and semantic, and IT means to share information.

Leveraging the new breakthroughs on coupling the simulation results with physical data in continuous synch (digital twin toolkit), Digital Spacecraft allows for feedback and learning (e.g. from operations back to development, and among projects). The Digital Spacecraft therefore enables understanding, learning, reasoning and dynamically recalibrating models, for an improved decision-making.

The Digital Spacecraft “journey” implementation focuses on three main steps:

1. The digital continuity within an entity (e.g. industry and ESA) on a specific project,
2. The interoperability across entities (e.g. industry and ESA) on the same project,
3. The reuse of multiple Digital Spacecrafts developed in the frame of different projects within the same entity.

Digital transformation of space systems is an ESA Member States endeavour.

Digitalisation is a change process. The key of its efficiency is the digital continuity, in the three dimensions of space systems development: disciplines, life cycle and supply chain. This means that all space actors are similarly affected by the digitalisation, and that, if one actor has not yet reached it, then the continuity is broken and the benefits are locally lost, with a potential risk of global impact.

Space actors are not always progressing at the same pace. Some are more advanced in functional system engineering, other in manufacturing, disciplines are not evenly digitalised, and principally, LSIs may be more advanced than smaller industry stakeholders such as SMEs and suppliers.

The success of the change process will be as strong as its weakest link. Consequently, a widespread, staged development and incremental implementation approach is of strategic importance to bring all industrial actors at the same level, and this is where ESA and its Member States have a role to play.

The ultimate customer of this initiative are the Member states but the users are ESA and supply chain and their space project managers who will take a direct benefit in adopting this new way of working. It will bring savings that will free resources to study more complex projects or reduce cost of procurement of space assets. Therefore, the definition of a clear data governance that is agreed with the contractors is key, in order to provide access to data, to develop a solution to make the data models consistent, and to enable interoperability among the different s/w tools.