Fractionated Spacecraft Architectures Seeding Study

摘要

The report introduces the concept of spacecraft fractionation, which transforms a traditional monolithic spacecraft into a network of elements where a free-flying payload module is supported by nearby free-flying infrastructure modules supplying communications, data handling, power, etc. Models were developed from a customer-centric perspective to assess different fractionated spacecraft architectures relative to traditional spacecraft architectures using multi-attribute analysis. Along with traditional attributes of mass and cost, nontraditional attributes of maintainability, scalability, flexibility, and responsiveness were included in the assessment. A framework was created to clearly define and evaluate these non-traditional attributes, and appropriate metrics were constructed. This study demonstrates that if those non-traditional attributes are valued enough, customers would choose fractionated spacecraft rather than traditional ones.