Lisa Callahan, vice president and general manager of commercial civil space at Lockheed Martin’s space business, said she believes accelerated digital modernization efforts meant to improve spacecraft manufacturing processes could also benefit deep space missions, SpaceNews reported Tuesday.
She noted that the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the company to speed up its digital transformation roadmap and field more online tools for collaboration to enable remote employees to work on spacecraft designs.
“That allows us to get together through Zoom and other technologies to be able to do peer reviews of some of those designs online,” she said Tuesday at a symposium.
Callahan mentioned the development of a “digital twin” to enable Lockheed engineers to evaluate systems via simulations prior to placing orders for parts.
She also discussed how digital twins could help ground-based teams to immediately detect and address spacecraft issues during missions facing communication delays.