OMG Wins Prestigious Systems Engineering Award for CubeSat System Reference Model™

Steve MacLaird (OMG Senior Vice President)

 

The National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) awarded the team which developed the OMG's CubeSat System Reference Model^TM (CSRM^TM) the Lt. General Thomas R. Ferguson, Jr. Systems Engineering Excellence Award. That Team consists of the OMG’s Space Domain Task Force, the INCOSE Space Systems Working Group, and Dassault Systèmes.

A CubeSat is a low-cost, standardized satellite for secondary payloads often deployed from the International Space Station or ride share opportunities. The CSRM Logical Model, based on OMG’s System Modeling Language^TM (SysML®), will facilitate international academic, commercial, and government organizations and manufacturers lower development costs and increase the quality of CubeSat spacecraft. 

Orbital Transports (not an OMG member) downloaded OMG’s CSRM Logical Model to a physical model, and created a CubeSat Ontology Library, Mission Architecture, and a SmallSat Sub-Systems Catalog to build a CubeSat for launch.

Developing the CSRM resulted from outstanding cooperation among modeling experts from OMG’s Space Domain Task Force and Architecture Board, INCOSE’s Space Systems Working Group, and OMG member Dassault Systèmes. That Orbital Transports could create a physical model after downloading the beta-model from OMG’s website attests to the openness and continued success of OMG specification standards. When the CubeSat launches next March, it will prove that open standards work, and that modeling saves time and money.

To date, universities and government entities worldwide have been downloading and exploring the benefits of the standard.

The NDIA Ferguson Award was established in 2003 to honor the memory of Lt. Gen Thomas R. Ferguson, Jr., USAF. His leadership embodied the highest ideals in the development and deployment of defense systems.