New digital twin technologies from Bloc Digital to reduce time and cost of satellite development lifecycle

Digital twinning is a virtual model of a process, product or service and this SPRINT funding will enable Bloc Digital to collaborate with the University of Leicester on the project that will apply digital twins to reduce the time and cost of the satellite development lifecycle.

The project will be funded by a grant from the £4.8 million SPRINT (SPace Research and Innovation Network for Technology) programme. It brings together academic research and the business community, combining unprecedented access to university space expertise and facilities with industry and market leading innovation to support the commercial exploitation of space data and technologies.

Bloc Digital will create a virtual environment including the Compact Air Quality Spectrometer (CompAQS) imaging spectrometer, a cutting-edge instrument developed by the University of Leicester and partners, as a demonstrator at the University of Leicester’s Space Research Centre. This virtual environment will enable the company to develop and visualise physical, stress and thermal models of the instrument that can be integrated to create a near real-time digital twin.

The results of the SPRINT project will support Bloc Digital’s development of the Virtual Lab Builder solution that will reduce the time and cost required to create digital twins. It will open the technology to a much wider audience in the space industry and academia, and thus allowing widespread collaboration in the development of space-based applications.