Session
Technical Poster Session 7: Ground Systems & Operations
Location
Utah State University, Logan, UT
Abstract
The estimation of the operational lifetime of a satellite is a challenging task, difficult to generalize. Typically, it has been done by predicting the different failure modes (e.g. hardware degradation or radiation) and modeling them through physical models. This requires extensive testing campaigns that imply high costs. In addition, traditional predictions tend to be over-conservative in their lifetime predictions, which is undesirable when replenishing launches have to be planned long in advance.
These two factors make the traditional approach to lifetime prediction unsuitable for mega-constellations of small satellites with many off-the-shelf components, like PlanetScope. On the other hand, these constellations offer a lot of data from the launch, operation and retirement of satellites whose bus is very similar to the ones to be launched. This opens the possibility of a completely different kind of model, where the probability of retirement at each point in the lifetime of a satellite is estimated based on historical data from alike spacecrafts. Although this purely statistical approach may lack precision when estimating the lifetime of an isolated satellite, when taking the constellation as a whole, it can efficiently model the rate of failure of the fleet.
Stochastic Satellite Failure Prediction and Fleet Capacity Forecasting
Utah State University, Logan, UT
The estimation of the operational lifetime of a satellite is a challenging task, difficult to generalize. Typically, it has been done by predicting the different failure modes (e.g. hardware degradation or radiation) and modeling them through physical models. This requires extensive testing campaigns that imply high costs. In addition, traditional predictions tend to be over-conservative in their lifetime predictions, which is undesirable when replenishing launches have to be planned long in advance.
These two factors make the traditional approach to lifetime prediction unsuitable for mega-constellations of small satellites with many off-the-shelf components, like PlanetScope. On the other hand, these constellations offer a lot of data from the launch, operation and retirement of satellites whose bus is very similar to the ones to be launched. This opens the possibility of a completely different kind of model, where the probability of retirement at each point in the lifetime of a satellite is estimated based on historical data from alike spacecrafts. Although this purely statistical approach may lack precision when estimating the lifetime of an isolated satellite, when taking the constellation as a whole, it can efficiently model the rate of failure of the fleet.
