A Beacon Monitoring System for Automated Fault Management Operations

Stanford's Space Systems Development Laboratory (SSDL) has initiated a new space system technology initiative in order to develop, demonstrate, and validate a beacon monitoring system for spacecraft. This system consists of automated fault detection on board a spacecraft, a state of health beacon signal broadcast by the spacecraft, a ground based monitoring network, and a mission control center capable of efficiently integrating this health assessment strategy into its operating architecture. SSDL is investigating this technique by identifying fundamental design drivers, developing a system responsive to these drivers, and deploying the resulting system on micro spacecraft and within SSDL's developing, global, automated space operations network. This paper reviews the beacon monitoring concept, describes the design criteria for such an operations strategy, and presents the current development of the SSDL beacon system.