Date of Award

3-2026

Degree Name

MS in Aerospace Engineering

Department/Program

Aerospace Engineering

College

College of Engineering

Advisor

Eric Mehiel

Advisor Department

Aerospace Engineering

Advisor College

College of Engineering

Abstract

The Horizon Simulation Framework (HSF) occupies a unique space in the modern aerospace modeling landscape, enabling flexible, modular modeling of mission-level agent behavior through an object-oriented, hierarchical design. HSF's hallmark breadth-first search scheduling algorithm explores a "multiverse" of possible mission execution pathways, enabling exhaustive evaluation of schedule combinations against user-defined heuristics.

As aerospace systems become increasingly complex, HSF faces critical challenges in establishing verifiable, deterministic behavior. The framework's core scheduling algorithm had not undergone systematic validation, leaving questions about temporal consistency, state management correctness, and reproducibility across different program executions. Furthermore, the exponential growth of schedule combinations creates computational bottlenecks that motivate exploration of parallel execution strategies.

This thesis addresses these challenges by establishing HSF as a verifiable, deterministic simulation environment through comprehensive unit testing, rigorous behavioral definitions, and careful refactoring. The research focuses on three primary areas: (1) establishing strict temporal enforcement rules for events and tasks, validated through systematic unit testing, (2) implementing hash-based regression testing to verify deterministic schedule behavior across program runs, and (3) refactoring core data structures and implementing parallel execution infrastructure to enable scalable computation while maintaining functional simulation validity.

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