PhD candidate in Sustainability in Space – Designing Future Space Services and Infrastructure

The current servitization of space is introducing profound change, challenging established companies with new business models, and significantly lowering the entry barrier to space. New types of services such as Mission-as-a-Service, Satellite-as-a-Service, Constellation-as-a-Service, etc., are emerging at a rapid pace. This is just the beginning. The future might see a space infrastructure on which new space services could be built at low cost and risk, similar to business models enabled by the internet, cloud computing, etc. on Earth. Key enablers for such an infrastructure are communications and data infrastructures and new computing approaches such as edge computing, fog computing, cloud computing. These combined services and infrastructure elements (also called product-service system) could also lead to significant sustainability benefits via replacing physical products by services. Instead of developing a spacecraft which would impact the environment via its production, launch and space debris, various space assets and their capacities are efficiently used, reducing the environmental impact significantly (e.g. constellation shared between multiple users instead of each one launching a separate constellation). However, these new space services and infrastructure are largely unexplored to date, despite their huge potential.

The main objective of this thesis is to develop a systems architecting approach for new space services and infrastructure to enable their systematic design and assessing their potential sustainability impact. This objective requires the execution of the following subtasks:

• Survey the existing literature on space and terrestrial product-service systems, service engineering, service design research in order to transfer these concepts and design approaches to space;
• Survey emerging space technologies for novel space services and infrastructure, e.g. communication (e.g. 5G, 6G, distributed antennae), computing paradigms (e.g. edge computing, fog computing, cloud computing);
• Development of a tailored systems architecting approach for new space services and infrastructure;
• A sustainability-oriented evaluation approach, in order to assess the economic, environmental, and societal impact of new space services and infrastructure;
• Design specific combined new space services and infrastructure elements, e.g. services based on novel communications (e.g. 5G, 6G) and computing approaches in space, e.g. edge computing, fog computing, cloud computing.