Predicting Failures and Estimating Duration of Service Life from Satellite Telemetry

This paper addresses research completed for predicting hardware failures and estimating remaining duration of service life for satellite components using a Failure Prediction Process (FPP) as envisioned by the University of California Berkeley, Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics (CEA). It is a joint paper, presenting initial work completed at the CEA using telemetry from the EUV EXPLORER (EUVE) satellite and statistical computation analysis completed by Lockheed Martin. This work was used in identifying suspect "failure precursors" and is followed by a Lockheed Martin exploration into the application of statistical pattern recognition methods to identify FPP events observed visually by the human expert. Both visual and statistical methods were successful in detecting suspect failure precursors. From experience, an estimate for remaining service life for each unit was developed and compared with the actual time the equipment remained operable. We assumed that telemetered data from electrical and electro-mechanical components have unique signatures for normal operational behavior. Changes, however brief, in that normal behavior could be interpreted as indicators (precursors) of degradation, which could, in some predictable time span, lead to component failure. The indicators of interest in this research occurred within normal operating behavior and are not detectable by limit-checking schemes. The long-term objective of this research is to develop a resident software module which can provide information on FPP events automatically, economically, and with high reliability for long-term management of spacecraft and ground equipment. Based on the detection of an FPP event, an estimate of remaining service life for the unit can be calculated and used as a basis to manage the failure.