Using Analog Telemetry to Measure Equipment Mission Life and Upgrade Factory Equipment ATP

Abstract

For equipment and systems that are too expensive and too important to fail such as launch vehicles and spacecraft, the actual reliability is dominated by infant mortality failures that occur soon after dynamic environmental ATP that is used to eliminate the equipment that will fail prematurely. Premature equipment failures greatly increase risk getting to space and working in space, slowing down the growth of commercial space tourism. Premature equipment failures occur because during factory ATP, only equipment performance is measured and there is no relationship between equipment performance and equipment reliability. Accelerated aging was documented preceding GPS satellite atomic clock failures during the 10 years of the GPS Block I test and evaluation phase. Prognostic technology leverages the presence of accelerated aging to identify equipment that will fail. A prognostic analysis uses the same prognostic algorithms to convert equipment telemetry used to measure equipment performance to a time-to-failure (TTF) measurement, previously made using a probability distribution function. The equipment with accelerated aging that is present after ATP can be replaced, stopping infant mortality failures from occurring and producing equipment with 100% reliability. When all spacecraft and launch vehicle equipment that will fail prematurely are identified and replaced, satellite and launch vehicle reliability will be 100% and getting to space and working in space will be much safer.