UK seeks simulator for Artemis

Acting on behalf of Army HQ, Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) in the UK MoD is seeking to procure a modular, event-driven and fully data representative satellite simulator for use in design, development, integration, test and operation of space segment assets.

DE&S expects to receive at least ten proposals including submissions from SMEs. It will send out invitations to tender for an £800,000 ($1.09 million) contract in mid-February 2021.

The simulator, to be called ARTSIM, will be used in support of the Artemis programme to develop, test and launch a constellation of small low-Earth orbit satellites.

‘ARTSIM, as the baseline deliverable, will provide a set of generic default satellite configurations which can be used for the analysis of a range of mission operations and capability objectives,’ DE&S noted in a post on the EU tenders database.

It added: ‘The system must take a flexible, distributed architecture approach, providing for a range of spacecraft components to be simulated to a level of fidelity which can be determined by the team utilising the tool.’

ARTSIM also requires a high-quality graphical user interface and animations to visualise satellite and orbit configurations.

Simulation of satellite systems, subsystems and interfaces, in real-time and simulated time, will provide an operationally ready capability, which is able to represent a range of satellite implementations (including constellations) with a full range of orbit configurations.

Unveiled in 2019 with £30 million of MoD funding, Artemis was to help the UK achieve a sovereign space capability by fast-tracking the launch of a small satellite demonstrator within 12 months.

Although it missed this target, a Royal Air Force-led team (including SSTL, Airbus, Raytheon, the US government and launch provider Virgin Orbit) has been developing an operational capability demonstrator.