In 1968 a study of the thermal-vacuum test results from 11 flight model spacecraft was published in NASA Technical Note TN D-4908. A major interest then was the relationship of malfunctions to their times of occurrence in test. From that study conclusions were drawn with respect to the length of time required for an adequate thermal-vacuum test of flight model spacecraft. A serious limitation on the study was the small amount of documented data available. The purpose of the present report is to update and to extend the findings of that study. The test results of 39 spacecraft, compared with the test results of 11 spacecraft used in the earlier study, now provide a better basis for the analysis. The new data were developed for analysis in the same manner as for the 1968 report, in order to facilitate comparison of the two studies. However, the larger data base made additional types of analyses worthwhile, and the present results are a significant extension of the earlier work.
Analyses of flight model spacecraft performance during thermal-vacuum tests
1973-06-01
Conference paper
No indication
English