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NASA Spacecraft Fault Management Workshop ResultsFault Management is a critical aspect of deep-space missions. For the purposes of this paper, fault management is defined as the ability of a system to detect, isolate, and mitigate events that impact, or have the potential to impact, nominal mission operations. The fault management capabilities are commonly distributed across flight and ground subsystems, impacting hardware, software, and mission operations designs. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Discovery & New Frontiers (D&NF) Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) recently studied cost overruns and schedule delays for 5 missions. The goal was to identify the underlying causes for the overruns and delays, and to develop practical mitigations to assist the D&NF projects in identifying potential risks and controlling the associated impacts to proposed mission costs and schedules. The study found that 4 out of the 5 missions studied had significant overruns due to underestimating the complexity and support requirements for fault management. As a result of this and other recent experiences, the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Planetary Science Division (PSD) commissioned a workshop to bring together invited participants across government, industry, academia to assess the state of the art in fault management practice and research, identify current and potential issues, and make recommendations for addressing these issues. The workshop was held in New Orleans in April of 2008. The workshop concluded that fault management is not being limited by technology, but rather by a lack of emphasis and discipline in both the engineering and programmatic dimensions. Some of the areas cited in the findings include different, conflicting, and changing institutional goals and risk postures; unclear ownership of end-to-end fault management engineering; inadequate understanding of the impact of mission-level requirements on fault management complexity; and practices, processes, and tools that have not kept pace with the increasing complexity of mission requirements and spacecraft systems. This paper summarizes the findings and recommendations from that workshop, as well as opportunities identified for future investment in tools, processes, and products to facilitate the development of space flight fault management capabilities.
Document ID
20100020196
Acquisition Source
Marshall Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Newhouse, Marilyn
(Computer Science Corp. (CSC) Falls Church, VA, United States)
McDougal, John
(NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL, United States)
Barley, Bryan
(NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL, United States)
Fesq, Lorraine
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Stephens, Karen
(NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL, United States)
Date Acquired
August 24, 2013
Publication Date
April 25, 2010
Subject Category
Statistics And Probability
Report/Patent Number
M09-0687
Meeting Information
Meeting: SpaceOps 2010 Conference: Delivering on the Dream
Location: Huntsville, AL
Country: United States
Start Date: April 25, 2010
End Date: April 30, 2010
Sponsors: American Inst. of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NAS8-02060
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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