Mission Operations Digital Twin for Decision Making (MODT)

This Phase II Mission Operations Digital Twin (MODT) proposal aims to enhance mission awareness, immersion, and collaboration of the flight control team and other stakeholders, like never before. Train like you fly, and fly like you train is a popular motto in the Mission Control Center (MCC), and with MODT the goal is to plan, train and fly (operate) as if you are really there. To accomplish this, MODT Phase II focuses on three major thrusts. The Digital Twin Portal provides the access point for the MODT platform as well as the window through which mission awareness is communicated to the entire team. This will be expanded significantly in Phase II to include the MCC Big Board. That is, the main screen in MCC that provides mission visualization as well as status of key systems or activities. The Virtual Mission Workspace will be a key contribution from Phase II. It provides the ability for users, operators, flight directors and stake-holders to tap into ongoing mission activities and customize their own interface (displays/VR/AR) according to their own interests and responsibilities. Finally, the Mission Decision Analysis capability is the architecture that makes it possible to create, simulate and analyze any mission scenario. In Phase II, event management and asset behavior programming will give users full control to define scenarios, and new optimization functionality will assist with planning and training applications. This combination of the Portal, Workspace, and Analysis functionality gives the entire mission team unprecedented access to visualize, monitor and interact with mission events. As demonstrated in Phase I, and developed further in Phase II, MODT also connects the visual digital twin of the environment and systems, to the data, documents, and other key information needed by operators for effective and efficient team decision-making. MODT will meet the needs (and wish-list) from the flight control team for Artemis and beyond. We propose a Virtual Mission Workspace platform that enables access to NASA Mission Control Center (MCC) data/models in the user workspace while immersing the user or a system in a virtual reality representation of any part of a space mission “as if you are there.” MODT provides a common portal for all users to collaborate on multi-disciplinary mission operations planning, training, and real-time operations. This platform provides situational awareness across the flight control team and crew, through a hyper-realistic, multi-user, multi-modal virtual environment that integrates existing (and future) data and analysis tools. MODT facilitates multiple simultaneous missions anywhere in the solar system within the same interacting space environment, such as Gateway, Lunar surface, and other spacecraft in cislunar space. It supports training simulations, real-time operations, as well as “What-If” scenario analysis with human-in-the-loop simulation. MODT is an integrated capability like never before to plan, train, and fly missions using the same platform. The technical objective is a software prototype implementation of the developed solution. The deliverable will address the following gaps in the subtopic description.   The need to improve the human interfaces needed for the interaction between the people and the digital environments. This includes both the input devices and the display devices. The computation needed for the metaverse/digital twin environment and where this computation would take place. The security requirements to run the distributed, multilocation, and multiuser environments. The need for platform interoperability. The system should be device agnostic and be able to run on an assortment of devices.   The key technical objectives are: Mission Control “Big Board” Features & Capabilities, Customized User/Operator Displays (Flat Screen/VR/AR), Advanced Decision-Making Capability, Scenario Creation and Event Management, Paths to Integration with Mission Control Tools, Integration with SysML, Security and Computability, Platform Interoperability. The deliverables for Phase II are (MVP = Minimum Viable Product): Final Technical report Quarterly Demonstration Reports Commercialization Plan report MVP1, MVP2, MVP3 demonstrations MVP1, MVP2, MVP3 demonstration presentations Executable binary of final demonstration

NASA’s plans for the Gateway and Artemis program, including lunar surface in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) systems, will directly benefit from the Mission Operations Digital Twin concept. The proposed project is directly aligned with the objectives of NASA’s Human Health, Life Support, and Habitation Systems as well as Exploration Destination Systems which call for development of a framework for an integrated training design that supports skill acquisition, retention, and transfer and Operations Effectiveness. DOD Space Force: Modeling & Simulation (M&S) capability, and realtime Situational Awareness of ongoing missions and international activities in space well beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO). USSPACECOM: Provide the modeling and simulation platform for the APOLLO WATCHTOWER Search and Rescue/MEDEVAC game planned for 2025. T2S Solutions: Generate environmental data to train their ML platform ATLAS.

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