A Voyager attitude control perspective on fault tolerant systemsIn current spacecraft design, a trend can be observed to achieve greater fault tolerance through the application of on-board software dedicated to detecting and isolating failures. Whether fault tolerance through software can meet the desired objectives depends on very careful consideration and control of the system in which the software is imbedded. The considered investigation has the objective to provide some of the insight needed for the required analysis of the system. A description is given of the techniques which have been developed in this connection during the development of the Voyager spacecraft. The Voyager Galileo Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem (AACS) fault tolerant design is discussed to emphasize basic lessons learned from this experience. The central driver of hardware redundancy implementation on Voyager was known as the 'single point failure criterion'.
Document ID
19810059702
Acquisition Source
Legacy CDMS
Document Type
Conference Proceedings
Authors
Rasmussen, R. D. (Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Litty, E. C. (California Institute of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena CA, United States)