MSG-3: A reliability centered approach to identify maintenance measures

Kurzfassung

The number of space launches has increased significantly over the last decade, partly due to innovations in Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLVs). As a result, launch costs have been substantially reduced, enabling the deployment of a large number of space systems such as satellite clusters. To enable the sustainable and competitive operations of space vehicles, it is necessary to limit manufacturing rates of new space systems – partly by extending operational lifetimes of existing ones through eƯective maintenance measures. This lifetime extension will not only slow down the increase of orbiting space debris, but it is also expected to contribute to a reduction of critical raw material consumption for the manufacturing of specialized components. However, maintenance considerations are in a very premature state when it comes to its application in the space domain. With this presentation, we want to show how to use the reliability centered maintenance approach, called the MSG-3 analysis, for (safety-critical) space vehicle functions and to determine appropriate maintenance measures and the respective intervals. Therefore, we will demonstrate the steps of that analysis on a specific example of the space industry. Furthermore, statistical and analytic approaches will be presented, how intervals are identified based on MTBF, failure rate or exponential function. Besides an extension of the operational lifetime and maintaining a given level of reliability, identifying required maintenance tasks has the advantage of plannable post launch activities, which reduces workload and operational downtime and consequently increases the availability. Furthermore, by identifying weak points in terms of reliability or availability in early design stages, manufactures are enabled to address these issues through design adaptions.