Architecting The Human Space Flight Program with System Modeling Language (SysML)

Abstract

The next generation of missions in NASA's Human Space Flight program focuses on the development and deployment of highly complex systems (e.g., Orion MultiPurpose Crew Vehicle, Space Launch System, 21 st Century Ground System) that will enable astronauts to venture beyond low Earth orbit and explore the moon, near-Earth asteroids, and beyond. Architecting these highly complex system-of-systems requires formal systems engineering techniques for managing the evolution of the technical features in the information exchange domain (e.g., data exchanges, communication networks, ground software) and also, formal correlation of the technical architecture to stakeholders' programmatic concerns (e.g., budget, schedule, risk) and design development (e.g., assumptions, constraints, trades, tracking of unknowns). This paper will describe how the authors have applied System Modeling Language (SysML) to implement model-based systems engineering for managing the description of the End-to-End Information System (EEIS) architecture and associated development activities and ultimately enables stakeholders to understand, reason, and answer questions about the EEIS under design for proposed lunar Exploration Missions 1 and 2 (EM-1 and EM-2). I. Introduction his paper describes the use of Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) with SysML to enable more robust and complete systems engineering and integrated analysis of complex System-of-Systems (SoS) problems which have historically been implemented via paper/presentation-based design capture, disparate models, in documents, and in the brains of expert engineers across many disciplines. This paper describes constructs, rules, and methods applied in developing a model conforming to a rigorous and engineered structure that supports views for domain experts, analysis and tracking of stakeholder concerns, and standardized analysis that uses the relationships between the traditional system views to provide cross-cutting reasoning. A. Background-To the Moon with Exploration Missions 1 and 2 Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1) will send an unmanned Orion MultiPurpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) around the moon on a 7-to-10 day mission to qualify NASA's new Space Launch System (SLS), and verify Orion MPCV's readiness to carry astronauts beyond Earth orbit. EM-1 is targeted for launch in late-2017. Subsequently, Exploration Mission 2 (EM-2) will send a crew of four astronauts on a 10-to-14 day mission to the moon, where astronauts will spend four days in lunar orbit to test critical mission events and perform operations in relevant environments to support exploration to more distant points beyond Earth orbit. EM-2 is targeted for launch in mid-2019. To accomplish these missions we must coordinate a significant number of diverse terrestrial and space-based systems including: MPCV; SLS; supporting space and terrestrial communication facilities (provided the USAF,

Supporting architectural design of acknowledged SoS

“…Several other examples of different application domains can be mentioned, such as: aerospace (Bonilla et al, 2005;Dvorak et al, 2005;Jackson et al, 2012), energy managemnt (Agusdinata and DeLaurentis, 2008;Parker, 2008;Pérez et al, 2013), and military defense (Belloir et al, 2014;Shing et al, 2006). The amount of publications related to several different application domains indicates that SoS has raised considerable attention from academia and industry being a relevant system class for nowadays systems.…”

“…Engineering Lessons for Systems of Systems Learned from Service-Oriented Systems (Simanta et al, 2010) Assessing system software performance in complex system of systems environments (Wessel and Meyer, 2010) Measuring the architectural complexity of military Systems-of-Systems (Domerçant and Mavris, 2011) Agile development for system of systems: Cyber security integration into information repositories architecture (Farroha and Farroha, 2011) Singleton to sandwich chunking into buslets for better system development (Hodges et al, 2011) Service Orientation and Systems of Systems (Lewis et al, 2011) Software engineering of component-based systems-of-systems: A reference framework (Loiret et al, 2011) Executable system architecting using systems modeling language in conjunction with colored Petri nets in a model-driven systems development process (Wang and Dagli, 2011) The process of architecting for software/system engineering (Chigani and Balci, 2012) COAST: An Architectural Style for Decentralized On-Demand Tailored Services (Gorlick et al, 2012) System of Systems to provide Quality of Service monitoring, management and response in Cloud Computing environments (Hershey et al, 2012) Supporting Awareness during Collaborative and Distributed Configuration of Multi Product Lines (Holl et al, 2012) Architecting the Human Space Flight Program with Systems Modeling Language (SysML) (Jackson et al, 2012) Scaling Up Software Architecture Analysis Towards integrated rule-driven software development for IT ecosystems (Mensing et al, 2012) Multi-agent architecture with space-time components for the simulation of urban transportation systems (Nguyen et al, 2012) Extending VDM-RT to enable the formal modelling of System of Systems (Nielsen and Larsen, 2012) Interface specification for system-of-systems architectures (Payne et al, 2012) Reengineering legacy systems towards system of systems development (Ramos et al, 2012) Appendix A. Systematic Mapping on SoS Software Architectures: Study Protocol and List of Included Primary Studies…”