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Fault Management Guiding PrinciplesRegardless of the mission type: deep space or low Earth orbit, robotic or human spaceflight, Fault Management (FM) is a critical aspect of NASA space missions. As the complexity of space missions grows, the complexity of supporting FM systems increase in turn. Data on recent NASA missions show that development of FM capabilities is a common driver for significant cost overruns late in the project development cycle. Efforts to understand the drivers behind these cost overruns, spearheaded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD), indicate that they are primarily caused by the growing complexity of FM systems and the lack of maturity of FM as an engineering discipline. NASA can and does develop FM systems that effectively protect mission functionality and assets. The cost growth results from a lack of FM planning and emphasis by project management, as well the maturity of FM as an engineering discipline, which lags behind the maturity of other engineering disciplines. As a step towards controlling the cost growth associated with FM development, SMD has commissioned a multi-institution team to develop a practitioner's handbook representing best practices for the end-to-end processes involved in engineering FM systems. While currently concentrating primarily on FM for science missions, the expectation is that this handbook will grow into a NASA-wide handbook, serving as a companion to the NASA Systems Engineering Handbook. This paper presents a snapshot of the principles that have been identified to guide FM development from cradle to grave. The principles range from considerations for integrating FM into the project and SE organizational structure, the relationship between FM designs and mission risk, and the use of the various tools of FM (e.g., redundancy) to meet the FM goal of protecting mission functionality and assets.
Document ID
20120008006
Acquisition Source
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Document Type
Conference Paper
External Source(s)
Authors
Newhouse, Marilyn E.
(NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL, United States)
Friberg, Kenneth H.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Fesq, Lorraine
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Barley, Bryan
(NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL, United States)
Date Acquired
August 25, 2013
Publication Date
March 30, 2011
Subject Category
Quality Assurance And Reliability
Meeting Information
Meeting: Infotech @ Aerospace 2011 Conference: Unleashing Unmanned Systems
Location: St. Louis, MI
Country: United States
Start Date: March 29, 2011
End Date: March 31, 2011
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other
Keywords
principles
fault management (FM)

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