SeaLion CubeSat Mission Architecture Using Model Based Systems Engineering with a Docs as Code Approach

CubeSats are a growing population within the space industry. Every year, universities launch numerous amounts of CubeSats due to their inexpensive cost of development, launch, and deployment. However, this comes with numerous challenges. As the number of university-CubeSats grow, so too do the numbers that fail. With development teams consisting mainly of students with little to no training, proper and yet easy to use tools or methods should be implemented to help ensure mission success. Especially in the critical stages of planning before and during development, a technical approach to quickly track life cycle development of a CubeSat is needed. This includes a toolchain and language with minimal training requirements and overhead. In response, the action was taken to use a model-based systems engineering methodology with a docs-as-code approach. Presented here, a method created with the Mach 30 Modelling Language and other state-of-the-art tools to help facilitate flight software development and other CubeSat development processes. Using easily human readable and editable YAML files, an architecture was formed that allowed for ease of editing that communicated with the rest of the model. Thus, allowing for the joining of a collection of references, stakeholder needs, user stories, and data structures. Components as well as their interfaces, junctions, and assembly instructions are also included in the architecture’s development