Digital Transformation of the NASA Engineering Domain

To enable the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to take on larger, more complex science and exploration missions and continue to effectively engage and collaborate with domestic industry and international partners, the Agency must undertake a transformation to modern integrated Digital Engineering (DE) including Model-based Systems Engineering (MBSE). This paper briefly covers NASA’s journey in understanding what Digital Engineering Transformation (DET) means for the Agency, the benefits of this transformation, and NASA’s Digital Engineering strategy for moving forward to realize the benefits and capabilities. Additionally, there are summaries of benchmarking activities undertaken to understand the state of practice in the private sector, and NASA’s current DE and MBSE capabilities. The resulting benchmarking information was infused into the Agency’s capability gap analysis and resulting transformation activities. The ultimate DET goals, within NASA’s Engineering domain, center around more effective flow and management of data and information in support of standardized engineering processes (with the required data and information constructs and metadata needed for maximum benefit). By using integrated toolchains (suites of tools used within an organization that are able to share data and information) and associated digital threads across the program/project lifecycle, the goal is to decrease the time required to define mission architectures and designs, reduce design errors and later rework, facilitate change impact analysis, and enable data-centric management of all information associated with engineering products, services, design, and associated artifacts.