Slow and steady won't win this race: Beyond compliance-based mission assurance for small satellites

There is no question that standardizing processes, techniques and best practices has contributed greatly to technological evolution, particularly in the aerospace industry. Formally capturing these elements in a way that becomes widely disseminated is a key element of learning. However, there are many problems associated with this approach when blind obedience supersedes critical thinking. This paper describes the next generation of small satellite reliability assurance that challenges current traditional compliance based design approaches. Further, it changes the focus from reliability as an endstate towards reliability as one of many factors of value. ‘Complex system’ disasters ranging from the Deepwater Horizon through to Fukushima involved systems that were ‘safe’ the day their disasters unfolded. That is, they were deemed compliant by regulatory bodies and allowed to operate. Traditional compliance-centric regulation and assurance routinely fails in many large-scale government and commercial satellite systems. Ensuing investigation showed how organizations that don't culturally embrace safety and reliability will invariable be unreliable and safe. But the problem of designing safe and reliable systems is exacerbated in the small satellite industry where rapid technology growth and adaptation occur at unheralded rates. In fact, a key advantage for small satellite systems is their ability to embrace and absorb state of the art technology into their systems. For standards and reliability assurance guidelines to have a chance of being effective, those standards and guidelines need to be current, well researched, and compatible with an agile environment where rapid development takes place. While a mission assurance regime is needed for any satellite mission, its scope and prescriptions need to be tailored so that they are appropriate for the scale of small satellite missions in addition to not being so cumbersome that they eliminate and defeat the agile nature of their development teams and processes. This paper outlines a new approach to assuring reliability in the small satellite industry. This approach focuses on ‘assuring culture’ as opposed to ‘assuring compliance.’ This sees assurance move away from a checklist of activities through to assuring robust design and decision-making processes that are well researched and continually improve. Instead of designers being motivated to align with standards or guidelines, designers are motivated by providing value to customers. This may mean that reliability as a metric is not (at least philosophically) ruthlessly maximized — this is a design constraint that costs money. Instead, understanding reliability, how much it costs to improve it, and what alternatives exist (such as the launch of multiple satellites) to ensure service and availability that creates value for the customer needs to be rewarded. This paper is based on interaction and feedback from the small satellite manufacturing industry. Several of those involved are looking at implementing the recommendations contained herein in their next generation of small satellites.