What scope of power-on/turn-on data do you review?

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  • PMPedia Admin
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    2020-06-19 at 12:19 pm #1443
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    In the special cases of high-reliability, ultra-short duration (<24 hours) missions, demonstrating successful turn-on may not be sufficient to show that it will perform for the rest of the mission. What scope of power-on/turn-on data do you review for the devices being considered and do the results meet your requirements?

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    PMPedia Admin
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    2020-06-19 at 12:19 pm #1444
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    Suggestions, Observations and Lessons Learned

    In some sense, extremely short missions seem simpler than other types, just by virtue of their duration. Alternate-grade EEE parts’ mean time to failure may far exceed the mission duration itself. On the other hand, these missions can be very challenging because the stakes are so high in the event of an anomaly. Therefore, prudent approaches to mitigating a mission-ending event might be to employ overly conservative redundancy schemes; selectively upgrade to higher- reliability devices for mission-critical functions; perform independent testing on a statistically significant sample of parts identical those in the mission or leverage heritage flight data, if it exists. However, these options incur costs which, in aggregate, must be weighed against the cost savings of procuring the alternate- grade part.