The evolution of CubeSats from a technical demonstrator to a reliable, low-cost platform for custom scientific and commercial missions has introduced a new era of space operations. This shift has heightened the demand for risk management, reliability, and predictable data delivery. The increasing competition in the aerospace industry has intensified the need for more efficient methods. Digital Twin presents a promising solution for streamlining the life cycle of a CubeSat, enabling accelerated development and more reliable operations. Despite its potential, limited research prevents broader application in the CubeSat sector. This study delves into the unique and complex challenges of implementing a Digital Twin for a CubeSat, considering its short development cycles, high modularity, and limited resources. The theoretical considerations integrate insights from a comprehensive review of relevant literature and data collected through an industry survey, providing a holistic perspective on the subject matter. It offers insights into tailoring the Digital Twin process to the characteristics of CubeSats. The practical side showcases the hardware and software components utilized in the implementation, using a 6U-CubeSat as a case study. It focuses on early lifecycle data correlation of the payload power management, enhancing the understanding of the satellite’s behavior and enabling early configuration optimization. The industry survey analyzes the application of the Digital Twin in the satellite industry. It assesses the current state of implementations within the sector using a maturity model, highlighting the increasing interest in the topic and identifying the current techniques. Insights gained from the industry perspective are contextualized. This involves identifying key challenges and system requirements, emphasizing subsystem detail fidelity, and prioritizing modeling scope across the life cycle. A generic CubeSat Digital Twin framework is presented, which includes the central architecture, possible applications, and benefits for the system, enabling the application of a Digital Twin to future CubeSat missions. The focus is on understandability, effective data integration, and ensuring the accuracy and reliability of the Digital Twin. It shifts the approach from safety factor based to instantiation-based designs, enabling informed decision-making through integrated data. The exploration of the feasibility of practical implementation is demonstrated through the implementation of CubeSat Digital Twin in the CubeSat project of the Chair of Spacecraft Systems at the Technical University of Munich, the EventSat. This mission involves a 6U CubeSat designed to advance object detection in space using an event-based camera. The implementation strategy focuses on the power management of the satellite. It illustrates its practical application by developing a Digital Twin to mirror the satellite’s behavior with an automated control loop. The system correlates real-world data with simulations and adapts the operation of the physical payload to changing parameters. This research identifies key strategies, limitations, and areas for improvement, utilizing insights obtained from industry perspectives through interviews and end-user feedback. It successfully bridges the gap between theoretical concepts and practical implementation, ensuring the effective application of Digital Twin technology in CubeSat development and operations.
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The evolution of CubeSats from a technical demonstrator to a reliable, low-cost platform for custom scientific and commercial missions has introduced a new era of space operations. This shift has heightened the demand for risk management, reliability, and predictable data delivery. The increasing competition in the aerospace industry has intensified the need for more efficient methods. Digital Twin presents a promising solution for streamlining the life cycle of a CubeSat, enabling accelerated d...
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