HOSTmi Information

After founding HOSTmi in July 2018, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Incubation Centre provided funding in August 2018 and global promotion and recognition was achieved. HOSTmi started to build and operate the first space mobility web platform matching between carrier assets and hosted payload requirements in order to introduce highly needed innovation in a field that is becoming increasingly important. In order to make this service available to a broad range of stakeholders, and to streamline the requirements-engineering within NewSpace, we have been working on digital mapping of all relevant space mission requirements, semantic standardization, semi-automated requirements-engineering processing, and the development of intelligent requirements matching algorithms. We consider this current platform called miSMART as an intermediate step towards our long-term goal with the company: offering a web-based (either closed or marketplace-oriented) Digital Twin as a Service (DTaaS) Platform. Our vision is to develop a digital environment in which space industry players can configure and operate digital twins of their assets (e.g. satellites). In doing so, we aim to overcome cross-organizational boundaries and increase the overall efficiency of a space mission. We are focusing on delivering an Industry 4.0 Digital Twin framework called the “Asset Administration Shell”, which enables organizations to share information and models across the lifecycle of a space mission. The entire solution will be web-based and can be used anytime, anywhere! These digital twins (DT) will come in place for different use cases along the entire value chain. One of these use cases is the operation of a spacecraft that could be handled via a so-called "Onboard Digital Twin" which is an AI-supported "edge-DT" on the spacecraft being instantiated from a so-called Master Model. The Master Model in combination with the Onboard Digital Twin is the orchestrator of the entire mission.