Stephanie Zhu
(Advisor: Prof. Mavris)

will propose a doctoral thesis entitled,

Development and Acquisition Modeling for Space Campaign Architecting

On

Friday, November 11 at 11:00 a.m.
Collaborative Visualization Environment (CoVE)
Weber Space Science and Technology Building (SST II)

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_MmY1YzA0MjMtYmNj…
 

Abstract
Contemporary space exploration goals are of higher complexity, necessitating multiple and concurrent launches and missions to fulfill. Given the large time-horizon and the evolution of new space systems, the technologies and capabilities to enable future missions are still in the process of maturation and being acquired. Current space campaign architecting does not consider capability development and acquisition in the conceptual phase. The process of maturation requires capabilities to be developed and demonstrated; the necessary timing and resources for maturation must be included in conjunction with the main missions in a space campaign. The result is that scheduling and operational gaps will occur in the campaign baseline--affecting the feasibility, viability, and optimality of an architected campaign.

This dissertation proposes a methodology to model and assess systems development and acquisition in conceptual phase space campaign architecting. The methodology maps a strategic planning taxonomy to the space campaign decomposition to define the problem and formulates a mixed integer programming representation as the optimization approach. Two formulations are presented, each to demonstrate a different perspective of capability acquisition. The first formulation represents how capabilities can be ordered to efficiently enable a future, desired architecture--the objective is to minimize time to completely develop a set of capabilities. The second formulation represents how capabilities and associated missions can be selected to maximize quantified 'value' to a stakeholder funding their development--the objective is to maximize value of a selected subset of capabilities and missions within a time-horizon. Both formulations are different perspectives of study on the evolving in-space landscape, with the globalization and commercialization of spacefaring entities.

Committee

• Prof. Dimitri Mavris – School of Aerospace Engineering (advisor)
• Prof. Koki Ho – School of Aerospace Engineering
• Prof. Glenn Lightsey – School of Aerospace Engineering
• Dr. Bradford Robertson – School of Aerospace Engineering