Conceptualizing a Framework for Hybrid Space Architecture Sourcing and Integration in Civil Space Missions

The modern space industry is experiencing rapid growth, driven by the rise of commercial actors, increased investment, and ambitious national space goals. As commercial offerings in space systems and services continue to mature, their relevance to government missions grows towards commercial space integration, the incorporation of externally developed systems and services into government-led mission architectures. Government agencies such as NASA increasingly rely on hybrid space architectures, defined as single unified architectures that integrate diverse sourcing pathways, including commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies, vendor-designed custom hardware, and government in-house development for space missions. While such diversity enables flexibility, relying on a multitude of vendors with differing standards, capabilities, and timelines introduces a systems engineering challenge. To support early-phase decision making under these conditions, this paper introduces the Multi-level Sourcing and Tradespace Analytical Approach for Architecture Recommendation M-STA^3R. MSTA^3R consists of individual technology evaluation, portfolio-level compatibility analysis and multi-phase lifecycle analysis to provide transparent, traceable, and hierarchical sourcing recommendations aligned with mission-level requirements. A notional spacecraft fluid-handling system example illustrates how early-decision made under uncertainty and limited data, can be systematically analyzed to reveal interface incompatibilities, integration burdens, and sourcing tradeoffs that may be obscured when assessing components in isolation. Key considerations, limitations, and opportunities for future development are discussed, including quantitative integration risk modeling, utility refinement, and managing portfolio-scale combinatorial complexity for broader application to small satellite architectures and multi-element system-of-system contexts.