CALLISTO – Flight Worthiness Process: how to prepare the tripartite go to flight decision?

Abstract

The CALLISTO vehicle (for Cooperative Action Leading to Launcher Innovation in Stage TOss-back) is a flight demonstrator for future reusable launcher stages. The program involves three countries and their space organizations: CNES for France, DLR for Germany and JAXA for Japan. The first tests will be conducted from the CSG, Europe's Spaceport for commercial launches. The challenge is to develop, all along the project, the skills of the Partners. This knowhow includes Products and Vehicle design, Ground Segment set up, and post-flight operations for Vehicle recovery then reuse.

It is a common and good practice to held a Flight Readiness Review at the latest before final operations clearing GO/NO GO for flight. Among the input for this review, a summary of all activities completed since the beginning of the program is provided: from initial product requirements compliance down to qualification testing period. In particular, this summary records all shortcomings that result in deviations to the launch system design-to-requirements, and especially the analysis proving that the residual risks of mission loss are acceptable.

In the case of CALLISTO program, this basic approach is applied and tuned according to the top peculiarities of the project. Then and according to culture and background of three aerospace Agencies that may differ with each other, it was decided to implement and agree a tailor-made Flight Worthiness process and its resulting output: the Flight Worthiness Report [1].

Moreover, and for avoiding possible misunderstandings for such “GO/NO GO for flight” key event very late in the program, it was decided to conduct a kind of dry run of Flight Worthiness process much ahead of first flight itself: as soon as the System Critical Design Review (aka CDR-S). To do so, the upcoming CDR-S will include a status of the Flight Worthiness [1].