PFAT: Post-flight analysis toolkit

Abstract

A large amount of data, involving various engineering domains, is generated through the different phases of a space mission. In particular, data produced during the operational phases relates directly to flight performance and it requires post-flight analysis in order to be evaluated. Post-Flight Analysis Toolkit (PFAT) is an open-source software, developed in Python under ESA contract, that aims at providing a smooth manipulation and aggregation of such datasets. Extracting figures of merit allows deriving engineering criteria to be used for future flight vehicle design. PFAT contains various modules, which interact which each other through a flexible data container type, which is called Common Data Structure (CDS) and that allows an agnostic data series treatment. The paper provides an overview of the computational capabilities of the tool together with the approach used to connect the different modules into full processing chains. Finally, insights on the verification and validation procedures are provided.