| Popis: |
The commercial space industry is required by current and future programs to be always more competitive in terms of cost and schedule. In this context it is mandatory to establish suitable testing approaches that can be a reasonable compromise among the conflicting needs of cost/schedule reduction, technical risk and test effectiveness. The participation of Alenia Spazio in the Globalstar program, having the responsibility of integrating and testing one qualification model and 56 flight models satellites in less than 2 years, with a production rate of four satellites per month, gave the opportunity to investigate suitable test strategies that can achieve such a goal. This paper will describe the various aspects analyzed by Alenia Spazio to identify some aspects and areas related to testing strategy for medium/small size class satellites. The first part of the paper will examine the importance of the “Concurrent Engineering” approach—in place of traditional project environment—aiming to involve test engineers in the satellite project cycle, besides design engineers, from the early program phase. Then the model philosophy and derived test programs will be discussed, outlining the difference between the “design verification oriented” test approach, for satellite qualification purposes and the “workmanship check oriented” test sequence conceived only for recurring flight models. Further discussions will deal with the “island production” approach applicable when a high production rate of satellites is required to deploy in orbit a constellation of small/medium size spacecrafts in short time. |
Full Text from ScienceDirect