Digital Mission Engineering Products: 2023 R1

With this latest release, STK’s approach to incorporating and modeling radar clutter effects has been consolidated to make it easier for users to introduce clutter effects and consider their impacts on their modeled radar’s performance.

This update enables users to define the clutter source locations as well as the scattering properties of the geometry. In addition, users can introduce a list of clutter sources to be included and considered by the radar system. These clutter definition models can also now be defined as centralized components through the STK Component Browser. so that other modeled systems can easily reference them.

The Astrogator scripting tool is a powerful mechanism for augmenting workflows within Astrogator. The addition of native support for Python scripting within this framework enables the possibility to leverage existing Python modules and represents a convenient option for users already versed in the increasingly popular Python language. Additionally, pre-installed Python wrappers for all Astrogator plugin points enables new, powerful plugin workflows that do not require registration within Windows or administrative privileges on the computer.

STK’s Aviator capability provides a flexible, procedure-oriented approach for mission designers to configure realistic aircraft routes. Procedures are used to represent components of an aircraft’s flight such as takeoffs and landings, enroute waypoints, common holding patterns, and other performance constrained procedures used to create realistic flight profiles. It is often common for engineers to have access to representative trajectory data from real-world operations, simulated trajectories, or other tools that may be used in their design toolchain. With this latest release of STK, Aviator introduces a new procedure in which users can reference external trajectory data while still allowing Aviator to apply appropriate attitude, aerodynamic, propulsion, and thermal models.

This latest release continues to provide expanded integration between Ansys Fluent and Ansys STK’s Aviator capability for advanced aircraft flight profile modeling — now enabling Fluent Aero models to be integrated with Aviator’s Advanced Fixed Wing Tool so that CFD results can directly drive high-fidelity mission modelling without users needing to create additional customized files. This also enables lift efficiency to be modified by the user to adapt models to known data points or to import ROM data from Ansys Fluent and adjust performance aspects while evaluating change impact. 

STK’s Test and Evaluation Tool Kit (TETK) scripting tool was developed to enable users to write basic functions with TETK variables. This latest release expands the scripting capabilities by enabling users to select and customize the names of scalar mappings, or basic statistics on those mappings, and use these as variables in MATLAB, Perl, or VBScript. The resulting output is a scalar that is available in data displays and usable in reports and graphs.

Sensor system designers must be able to accurately simulate conditions under which their sensors will be expected to operate and perform. This release of STK introduces a new capability for EOIR sensor definitions that enables users to directly link to an aircraft target object’s thermal load as produced by STK’s Aviator flight modeling capability. Aircraft designs and mission profiles can now provide the thermal loading results directly to the EOIR sensor models, reducing the need to export results, post-process, and reintroduce them to the sensor model for inclusion.

This new capability now shows up as a data provider option that has been added to the temperature option when defining an EOIR sensor’s target shape property files. This enables EOIR users to specify the Aviator thermal load model as a data source.

Containerized applications offer great benefits to engineering organizations that leverage the customization options provided by STK. Using STK’s backend engine along with automation APIs, users can containerize their custom applications, making them easier to deploy and minimizing the amount of time and effort required to provision compatible systems. With this latest release, STK provides supporting documentation for Windows containers in addition to the existing support for Linux.

The lunar and cislunar orbit regimes are seeing a dramatic increase in interest and planned use for a variety of applications ranging from robotic lunar orbiters and landers to manned lunar bases and even space tourism. Access to the lunar domain is opening at an unprecedented rate. To support the types of architectural studies needed to support a large variety of lunar missions, the ability to both process GNSS measurements from existing Earth-centered systems in the lunar domain and to simulate and process GNSS measurements from proposed Moon-centered systems has been added. We have extended the applicability of relayed measurement types such as bistatic range and Doppler and 4-legged range and 5-legged Doppler to situations where the elements of the tracking strand span between Earth and the Moon. We have also expanded the list of one-way measurement models available as a step toward facilitating the analysis of time transfer strategies between the Earth and lunar domains.