Visualization Tools for Satellite Digital Twins

June 26, 2026

The challenge of supporting small satellite mission operations under conditions of partial observability is addressed in this work, where operators must interpret spacecraft state from incomplete, delayed, or inferred information. This challenge is especially relevant to satellite digital twins, understood here as evolving digital representations of physical satellite systems informed by operational data, models, estimates, and historical information. In such contexts, relevant cues are often distributed across separate tools and views, making it harder to relate telemetry, orbital position, attitude, observation recency, uncertainty, and source reliability as parts of the same operational situation. A Human Computer Interaction oriented perspective is adopted, with focus on improving the interpretability of satellite digital twin information through a more coherent visual environment. A visualization prototype was implemented as a custom Grafana panel plugin that combines time series telemetry inspection with interactive spatial views of orbital trajectories, spacecraft attitude, sensor fields of view, celestial pointing context, ground station directional context, observation status, uncertainty cues, and source reliability information. The prototype was evaluated through five scenario based exercises covering collision risk interpretation, user assigned source reliability, communication degradation diagnosis, star tracker pointing validity, and ground station pass interpretation. The evaluation supports the idea that integrated temporal and spatial visualization can help users reason about satellite operations situations that would otherwise require switching between separate tools or mentally combining disconnected representations. A focused visualization extension can improve interpretive support in small satellite operations without requiring a complete replacement of existing mission monitoring infrastructure.

Authors in the community:

• 

  R

  Ricardo Beja Belchior dos Santos

  ist186680

Supervisors of this institution:

• 

  J

  João Paulo Lopes Monteiro

  ist169647

• 

  P

  Paulo Jorge Soares Gil

  ist12912

mechanical-engineering - Mechanical engineering

eng - English

Instituto Superior Técnico