Development of Operations Complement to the Space System Ontology

Abstract: Space system development is a complex process that typically involves multiple stakeholders. Traditionally, information is captured and exchanged in the form of documents. Efficient exchange of information is crucial, but often challenging with the traditional document-based approach and multitude of stakeholders. In addition to the challenges in information exchange, currently there is also pressure on the cost and schedule requirements of space projects. European Space Agency (ESA) proposes digitalisation as one of the solutions to these challenges, and more specifically, a transition from document-based approach to model-based. ESA’s vision is to implement digitalisation in the form of an infrastructure to support MBSE processes, named the System Factory. This System Factory needs a centralised data hub that provides interoperability between different stakeholders and tools used throughout space system development life cycle. The purpose of the hub is also to allow the stakeholders to exchange information using common semantics, described in the space system ontology (SSO). Model-Based Engineering Hub (MBEH) is an ESA project, implemented by RHEA Group, Thales Alenia Space, OHB and DEKonsult. The overall objectives of the project are to scope the MBSE hub, provide a technical solution for it and demonstrate its functionality with two use cases. The selected use cases are exchanges between operations (OPS) and systems engineering (ENG) domains, and reliability, availability, maintainability and safety (RAMS) and systems engineering domains. The objective of this thesis is to develop a conceptual data model (CDM) of the operations use case to support the MBEH project. The CDM was developed in two phases. The first task was to analyse and complement the exchanges related to the chosen operations use case based on the European Cooperation for Space Standardization (ECSS) standards. This written analysis was then used as a starting point for modelling, which was the second task. The modelling was performed using the Object Role Modeling (ORM) language and Natural ORM Architect (NORMA) tool. The models are created based on information from OHB and the ECSS standards. The next step in the MBEH project is to harmonise these models with the European Ground Systems Common Core (EGS-CC) and existing ontologies, which were not available for this thesis project.