A consortium led by Space Machines Company has received Australian government funding to develop a generative AI design system and rapid manufacturing process for future spacecraft.
The two-year project, called Optimised Generative AI Design for Mass-Manufacturable Spacecraft, brings together Space Machines Company, the University of Technology Sydney, the Advanced Manufacturing Readiness Facility at Bradfield City in Western Sydney, and Sydney-based engineering firm Fordyno.
The consortium received $2.1 million in Cooperative Research Centres Projects funding from the Australian government. With partner contributions included, the project is valued at more than $5 million.
The partners plan to build a machine-learning system that can generate spacecraft structures in response to changing design requirements. The project will pair that software with additive manufacturing and robotic assembly processes aimed at producing hardware within days rather than months.
The work centers on Space Machines Company’s Optimus Viper spacecraft. The company is targeting production of more than 20 Optimus Viper vehicles annually from its Australian facilities, making faster design and manufacturing a core requirement rather than a research exercise.
The final milestone for the project is delivery of at least one flight-qualified Optimus Viper primary structure, validated to launch standards and ready for orbital deployment. The partners said the project should also produce a commercial version of the generative design software, validated manufacturing procedures and a path from requirements to flight-ready hardware in weeks.
“Space security demands hardware that can evolve as fast as the threat,” said Rajat Kulshrestha, CEO and Co-Founder of Space Machines Company. “This project gives us the generative design and manufacturing capability to move from requirement to flight-ready structure in a fraction of the time, and repeat that process at scale as the mission changes.”
UTS will develop the generative design application under the supervision of Professor Zhen Luo, leader of the university’s Advanced Metacomposite Materials and Structures group. The university said the work will apply topology optimization to complete spacecraft structures, a more complex challenge than designing individual aerospace components.
The project must account for launch loads, thermal cycles, payload changes and evolving mission requirements across an entire spacecraft primary structure. UTS said that level of complexity has limited broader use of generative design in spacecraft manufacturing.
Manufacturing work will take place at the Advanced Manufacturing Readiness Facility in Bradfield City. The team plans to run as many as five build-test-iterate cycles once the AI system begins generating structures, with a target of completing each cycle from updated requirement to tested hardware within three weeks.
Fordyno will support the project with structural analysis, design-for-manufacture work and fabrication experience. The company’s role includes turning AI-generated structural concepts into manufacturable designs.