Patent ID: 8794016

Claim:
A method comprising: monitoring a plurality of physical properties of a cryocooler to obtain one or more failure precursor parameters, the one or more failure precursor parameters indicating a health of the cryocooler, wherein monitoring the plurality of physical properties comprises monitoring available power headroom and slopes of a power versus time curve at different environmental temperatures wherein, power is an average power used to maintain the cryocooler at steady state over time at a given environmental temperature, and power headroom is the difference between the average power required at steady state at a given environmental temperature and available maximum power; accessing a health fingerprint of the cryocooler, the health fingerprint generated from collected parameters of a sample cryocooler similar to the cryocooler, and the health fingerprint associating the one or more failure precursor parameters with a health level of the cryocooler; and estimating the health of the cryocooler in accordance with the health level.