Research

Research Before Flight

Ikirere investigates the engineering problems that determine how spacecraft are designed, operated and trusted with increasing autonomy.

Approach

Research Must Change What We Can Build

Our research is tied directly to the systems we engineer.

We focus on problems where better models, algorithms or system architectures can materially improve spacecraft design, mission operations or autonomous decision-making.

Research Areas

Core Research Areas

Orbital Dynamics & Mission Simulation

Active Research

Propagation, manoeuvres, orbital environments, mission geometry and spacecraft behaviour.

Spacecraft Systems Modelling

Active Research

Power, thermal, communications, attitude, payload and subsystem interactions.

Autonomous Mission Systems

Research & Development

Planning, coordination, decision-making, learning and safe autonomous operations.

Space Domain Awareness

Active Research

Orbital traffic, conjunction risk, object behaviour and operational context.

Simulation-to-Flight Systems

Research & Development

Keeping simulation, ground software and future flight systems technically coherent.

Current Work

What We Are Working On

Current research supports IkirereSim, IkirereOrbit, IkirereMesh and the spacecraft systems that connect them.

Selected work includes:

Spacecraft digital twins

Orbital propagation and manoeuvre modelling

Autonomous spacecraft decision systems

Multi-agent coordination

Conjunction and orbital-risk analysis

Spacecraft subsystem modelling

Simulation-to-flight interfaces

Mission-control systems

Collaboration

Research With Us

We collaborate with universities, laboratories, aerospace teams and independent researchers working on problems relevant to spacecraft engineering and autonomous space systems.

We are particularly interested in collaborations that produce:

Validated models

Real mission studies

Experimental results

Publishable technical work

Systems that can move toward operational use

Discuss a Research Collaboration