Training Flight Control Teams: Failure is an option
- Paper number
IAC-07-D1.5.06
- Author
Mr. Paul Steele, European Space Agency/ESOC, Germany
- Year
2007
- Abstract
In preparing for major mission events such as LEOP or orbit insertion a Simulations Campaign is executed at ESA with all flight teams participating together for the first time. Campaigns are expensive in terms of financial and manpower resources therefore maximising the benefits of the campaign is of importance.
A Simulations Officer will design and manage all aspects of the campaign including failure and scenario selection. But are the failures realistic? Are they representative? Is the training and failure distribution appropriate?
The traditional sources of data for failure selection are spacecraft documentation, Flight Contingency Procedures and the Simulations Officer’s experience. Only once a mission is complete can a comparison be made between actual in-flight anomalies and the introduced simulated anomalies. The paper presents the rationale behind introducing failures and a comparison between ESA’s Venus Express mission and the introduced anomalies in the Simulations Campaigns for LEOP and Venus Orbit Insertion. Recommendations for improving simulations and the space training environments include real groundstation operations in simulations and a proposal for new technology.
- Abstract document