Mike Conroy, University of Central Florida, SEE Smackdown Architect, Mike.Conroy@ucf.edu
Paige Whittington, NASA, SEE Technical Chair, Paige.A.Whittington@nasa.gov
SEE 2024: Introduction
The Simulation Exploration Experience (SEE) has united students, industry, professional associations, and faculty in collaborative college-level modeling and simulation learning since the first SEE event in Boston in 2011. During the SEE activities (preparations and final event), university teams from around the world design, develop, test and integrate their Exploration concepts for the Moon, Cislunar Space and Mars. Teams use open standards for modeling and simulation (M&S) that allow their concepts to work together as part of a large-scale simulated space mission. Due to the geographic dispersion of the teams (on Earth), their concepts interact with one another over the Internet, leveraging industry modeling and simulation standards for interoperability with one team providing the infrastructure as well as the base model. Past SEE teams helped define the very standards for space simulation (SISO SpaceFOM) in use today by NASA and similar organizations, demonstrated those standards, and exposed those capabilities to the world.
Legacy missions were focused 50 years in the future, allowing considerable latitude as to systems represented in the simulation. This began to change in 2022 with a move to the NASA Artemis plan (here) with technologies, systems, and capabilities expected to be available in the mid-2050s. SEE 2024 is focused on the creation of the initial lunar infrastructure and the foundation for human trips to Mars as described in NASA’s Moon to Mars Campaign Strategy (here).
This document shares the 2024 SEE Scenario and sets the stage for a migration towards System Design constructs and language. The major elements are Systems, which are the student’s designs; Behaviors, or what those systems actually do; and Interactions, or how the various Systems communicate with each other. The goal is to keep all of these elements at a high level, allowing the Teams to mature Systems, Behaviors, and Interactions as they desire and in line with the Artemis architecture.
