Space Telemetry Devices – Surviving and Measuring High Level Shocks

Abstract

An Airborne FTI device needs to meet unique requirements to be successfully used for Space Development Flight Instrumentation (DFI) and Operational Flight Instrumentation (OFI) applications. Apart from the obvious issue of radiation, a particular challenge for Space DFI and OFI is both surviving and measuring the high-level shocks caused by stage and payload separation. Using the Curtiss-Wright KAM-500 as an example, the type of shock levels that equipment must be qualified to will be presented along with strategies for surviving very high-level shocks. Shock events also require very high sample rates to correctly measure the shock. This can be a challenge for space vehicles where there is limited bandwidth available for transmitting telemetry data to ground. This paper will discuss some of the functionality required for DFI and OFI systems to manage this, including features which allow the structure of the telemetry stream to be changed dynamically in different mission stages, and devices with built-in memory which can be used to manage the flow of data to the ground.