A Study of On-Orbit Spacecraft Failures
- Paper number
IAC-07-D1.5.02
- Author
Dr. Mak Tafazoli, Canadian Space Agency, Canada
- Year
2007
- Abstract
Countries around the world are becoming more dependent on spacecraft for telecommunication, science, earth observation and military purposes. In fact, more than 4000 spacecraft have been launched into space just in the last 25 years. However, the space environment is harsh and each space mission is a great challenge. Many spacecrafts have failed before accomplishing their mission although they are using the more recent technologies and are subject to intensive testing. Others have been able to exceed their design lifetime despite severe failures. The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) studied 156 on-orbit failures which have occurred over the last 25 years on 129 different spacecraft. The information was gathered from public and private sources. This information was compared to official press releases, failure investigations and reliable science newspapers. These failures were analyzed in order to identify critical spacecraft subsystems and recurrent failure modes. The consequences of the different failure modes on the spacecraft mission are also studied. Finally, recommendations about failure recovery are presented. It is important to note that this paper considers only on-orbit spacecraft failures and launch failures are not treated. Moreover, we did not try to estimate the failure cost or failure rates as it has already been reported on in other papers. Our failure analysis compares the different spacecraft subsystems, identifies the recurrent failure modes and determines the impact of the failures on the mission. The way we classify and identify failures is also different than what has been done in previous studies. Although there is no perfect system that could prevent any failure, the lessons learned from the past years show that adequate testing, redundancy and flexibility are the keys to a dependable space system and a successful space mission.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-07-D1.5.02.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
To get the manuscript, please contact IAF Secretariat.