Making Getting to Space Safe by Upgrading the Satellite and Launch Vehicle Factory Testing with a Prognostic Analysis

摘要

Satellites and launch vehicle equipment continue to suffer from catastrophic premature failures. The space vehicle equipment and vehicle factory dynamic environmental acceptance testing helps to encourage unreliable equipment to fail and is used to identify equipment that has failed during test for repair or replacement but has proven to allow some equipment through that fails prematurely causing the most celebrated failures in the industry. The continued occurrences of premature failures on launch vehicles and on-orbit satellites demonstrates that testing alone is inadequate for identifying all the equipment that will be failing within the first year of use and thus must be augmented. A prognostic analysis uses proprietary data-driven algorithms for searching for accelerated aging, which precedes a failure when equipment telemetry is available and by converting telemetry into a reliability measurement. A prognostic analysis measures equipment reliability by illustrating the latent, transient accelerated aging present in equipment telemetry that will fail prematurely within one year of use. A prognostic analysis will identify all equipment that will fail prematurely prior to shipment of the spacecraft to the launch pad. A prognostic analysis completed after final factory testing will eliminate failures during launch, launch pad delays, on-orbit infant mortalities, surprise on-orbit failures and extend on-orbit satellite and equipment usable life making getting to space and working in space safe.