scope:

Abstract:

In November of 2003, the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) performed an Independent Technical Assessment of the Code Y CALIPSO satellite Proteus propulsion bus (ref. NESC Final Report NESC-RP-001, NASA Technical Memorandum number applied for). This is a joint mission with NASA GSFC, LaRC and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force base in April 2005 on a Delta II rocket. There were many interpretations of which specific document dictated the fault tolerance requirements for the spacecraft. Further, given a specific document, there were divergent conclusions over what the fault tolerance verbiage in each document imposed on the spacecraft design, checkout and operations.