New space

To make journeys safer, simpler and ensure more sustainable mobility, the aerospace industry is reinventing itself continuously, backed by its long history and culture of innovation. For companies in this sector, environmental priorities are closely connected with vital, long-standing historical objectives that include efficiency, profitability and regulatory compliance.

To achieve them, mobility players build virtual twins of their vehicles, covering the complete lifecycle: carrying out initial analysis, defining requirements, creating 3D models, obtaining certification and producing the vehicle. This system-of-systems approach takes engineering complexities arising from the interaction of mechanical, electrical and software components and simplifies them by using a standard language. This allows engineers to optimize a design by assessing thousands of hypotheses and finding the configurations that best meet the various requirements.

In 2023, the Moon is due to become the first staging post for space travel to more distant destinations, beginning with Mars. Inspired by the potential for humans to live on the Moon or on Mars, the Interstellar Lab startup, with operations in France and California, builds and tests experimental, bio-regenerative stations, modular, space-ready stations that can be configured as villages or even cities, featuring closed-loop, controlled environment systems that aim to be self-sufficient.

Virtually everything within these stations is recycled, making water, air and food as renewable as possible. This reduces the amount of land needed to feed their residents by more than 99%, while ensuring a steady, year-round supply of fruit and vegetables using 98% less water. Interstellar Lab brings together the expertise of NASA, SpaceX, Airbus, Safran, Saint Gobain and Dassault Systèmes, whose 3DEXPERIENCE platform and Reinvent the Sky solution provides a space in which many different specialists contribute their skills: biologists, aerospace and aeronautical engineers, specialists in control systems and materials science, architects and mathematicians.

Using a parametric design approach, the platform allows Interstellar Lab‘s team of engineers and architects to perform iterations and simulations to refine and optimize the design and production of the EBIOS stations and their modules, the BioPods. The station's virtual experience twin will become hugely valuable as Interstellar Lab moves toward making and operating its modules. Because the solution is in the cloud, teams have secure access to it at all times from any location.

“For the first 60 years of the Space Age, the space industry was dominated by major government programs. Now, private-sector companies are playing an increasingly important role, launches are more frequent and the number of operational satellites orbiting the Earth – currently numbering 3,400 – could rise to several tens of thousands in the next 30 years. The industry is now being inspired and invigorated by a wave of entrepreneurs pioneering groundbreaking, new technologies.

With the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, companies in the space industry can develop innovative engineering, manufacturing and operational solutions by modeling virtual missions, which will be front and center to sustainability in space and on Earth. The evolving landscape of international regulations, geo-politics, and the constant stream of new technologies and business models sets the background not just for the proliferation of satellites but also the challenge of managing space debris in orbit.

Currently estimated at over 28,000 objects, this debris threatens the sustainability of space activity. Space traffic management will be key to today’s industry renaissance in space.”

Jeff SMITH, Aerospace & Defense Strategy & Innovation, Dassault Systèmes