Maximum likelihood failure detection techniques applied to the shuttle orbiter reaction control subsystem

A technique for on-board detection and identification of hard failures and leaks of the shuttle orbiter reaction control subsystem jets, during the orbital flight phase, is presented. The method uses gimbal angle and linear accelerometer measurements from the orbiter inertial measurement unit and requires no additional hardware. Extended Kalman filters with residual traps are employed for state estimation, and generalized likelihood ratio tests for jet failure identification. Rigid body simulation results indicate identification times of less than 2 seconds for hard jet failures and less than 70 seconds for jet leaks.