Definition of Architectures & Technologies for Sustainable Human Exploration of the Moon

Different systems and mission architectures can provide the operational capabilities to extend the human presence on the Moon. However, constraints related to time, cost and technological maturity may drive the choice of the best mission architecture for a given stakeholder. To help fasten the feasibility assessment of different mission architectures, this study proposes an integrate methodology for the preliminary design of complex aerospace products that embeds crucial capabilities, including (i) the retrieval of information from industrial legacy and automatic fulfilment of structured database; (ii) the retrieval of data from database to generate several feasible missions architectures; (iii) the selection and characterization of the “best” mission architecture, through (iv) conceptual design as well as economic and technological feasibility. The proposed methodology combines the well-established Model Based Systems Engineering approaches with Knowledge Graph and it proposes the development of an AI based design assistant, by leveraging the Monte Carlo Tree Search method in conjunction with the Markov Decision Process. The approach is concretized in a toolset that combines: (i) Capella, an Open-source MBSE tool that implements the Arcadia method, and (ii) TypeDB, a strongly-typed database that uses TypeQL as its query language, an AI-based design assistant, a Cost estimating module and TRIS, a Technology Roadmapping Tool.