On the role of future HLA-based simulation in designing safety into space vehicles

This paper discusses High Level Architecture (HLA) based simulation in the context of designing safety into space vehicles. Distributed simulation plays an important role to fuse the two worlds of safety on the one hand and cost effectiveness on the other hand. HLA represents a simulation system architecture framework standard and focuses on interoperability and reusability of simulation components. The article analyzes the impact of the usage of the future HLA version called HLA 4 on space vehicle design. New possibilities with an increased level of loose component coupling in combination with the establishment of a-priori interoperability by using the Space Reference Federation Object Model (SpaceFOM) standard are presented.