The Australian National Concurrent Design Facility (ANCDF)

The centrepiece of UNSW Canberra Space is Australia’s first space mission concurrent engineering design facility. Fitted with 16 workstations and purpose-built engineering software, the ANCDF accelerates and improves mission design by enabling each member of the team, together with the customer or end user, to contribute their part to the project in parallel, significantly speeding up the design process. This allows engineers and scientists to rapidly determine the technical and economic viability of proposed space missions, not just for our team but for the Australian space sector. 

The ANCDF was developed based on firsthand experience in similar facilities in the European space industry. Designed to specifically support the Australian space sector, the ANCDF puts an emphasis on customer integration, with implementation cost and schedule forming an integral part of the technical design. 

The world-class facility is jointly funded by UNSW Canberra and the ACT Government and supported through a partnership with the French Space Agency CNES, whose concurrent engineering software suite form the basis of our capability.