Jane Edwards
Raytheon Technologies and Boeing‘s Millennium Space Systems subsidiary will use digital engineering techniques to develop digital models of infrared sensors for the U.S. Space Force’s future missile warning satellite constellation, C4ISRNET reported Tuesday.
The companies will utilize digital engineering to test and validate whether the missile tracking satellites can operate in medium-Earth orbit under two separate contracts awarded in May as part of the Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared program.
Rob Aalseth, executive director with strategic systems at Raytheon Intelligence and Space’s space and command-and-control systems division, said that with digital engineering, every team member can immediately see how changes to a specific part of a satellite could affect the performance of the system.
“You can float requirements all the way through, but digitally. You actually have a full representation of a product as well as all of the parameters to a high level of detail,” Aalseth said. “You could actually measure the performance of your electronics against the output, because it’s a realistic depiction.”
Jason Kim, CEO of Millennium Space Systems, said the contract with the Space Force provides the company an opportunity to demonstrate how the use of digital models could provide the speed and flexibility in validating multiple designs during the development phase.
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