Spacecraft Digital Twins

Spacecraft digital twins are high-fidelity virtual replicas of physical spacecraft that continuously synchronize with real vehicles through telemetry, creating accurate models that mirror the actual spacecraft's state, health, and behavior in real-time. These systems fuse telemetry data with physics-based models of structural dynamics, thermal behavior, power systems, and other subsystems, enabling operators to predict failures, test maneuvers and procedures virtually before implementing them, and optimize maintenance schedules across complex fleets of spacecraft.

This innovation addresses the challenge of operating complex spacecraft where understanding vehicle behavior is critical and opportunities to test procedures are limited. By maintaining accurate digital twins, mission teams can understand spacecraft behavior, predict issues before they become problems, and validate solutions in a risk-free virtual environment. The technology is being adopted across the space industry, with digital twins becoming standard tools for mission operations and vehicle development.

The technology is particularly valuable for complex missions where understanding vehicle behavior is critical and for new vehicle development where digital twins can accelerate certification and reduce risk. As spacecraft become more complex and autonomous, digital twins provide essential tools for understanding, testing, and operating them safely. However, maintaining accurate digital twins requires significant effort to keep models synchronized with actual vehicle behavior, and model accuracy is critical for the technology to be effective. The technology enables more confident operations, faster problem resolution, and better mission outcomes, but requires ongoing maintenance and validation to ensure accuracy.