Exploring round-trip engineering capabilities for satellite flight software projects

This work reports the use of an Integrated-Computer Aided Software Engineering-Environment (I-CASE-E) tailored for real time applications modeling and preliminary code development of satellite flight software as a safety-critical system. The UML modeling of satellite flight software has been addressed by basic functions. An incremental software development, based in the 4+1 architectural views, can be effectively attained even at high-level models. This tends to contribute to a higher software quality and shorter and more predictable delivery cycles. A model-driven approach was taken, which supports round-trip engineering enabling model consistency and risk mitigation. To keep the approach general, the satellite under consideration has a 3-axis stabilized bus with a generic payload.