Driving ISAM Workforce Development with the COSMIC Capstone Challenge

The key foundational capabilities of In-space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM) have been rapidly evolving in the last decade. There has been a surge in investments across the space industry to develop and advance the state of the art in the ISAM arena. The unique ISAM capabilities that will be derived from the results of these investments will support new unique missions, such as autonomous manufacturing of spacecraft and repair of spacecraft. The Consortium for Space Mobility and ISAM Capabilities (COSMIC) is a nationwide coalition working to invigorate a domestic ISAM capability and was established in 2023 as a result of the National ISAM Implementation Plan. COSMIC is driving the transition of ISAM to utilization, so that it becomes a routine part of space architectures and mission lifecycles. One of COSMIC’s goals is to inspire a diverse future workforce as a potential outcome of ISAM innovation; especially, to bolster the ISAM talent pipeline and ensure technical proficiency within the space industry. To achieve this objective, the COSMIC Capstone Challenge was created and implemented at more than 20 universities nationwide, backed by a dedicated team of mentors, advisors, and judges. This competition prompts student teams to create the conceptual design for a payload, to be hosted about the BCT X-Sat Venus Class bus, that would demonstrate a chain of three or more operations that provide an on-orbit, autonomous ISAM capability. This paper describes key concepts from the 2024-25 competition and the plans for 2025-26 academic year which has been expanded into four tracks.