Predicting Failures and Measuring Remaining Equipment Life for Highly Reliable Aerospace Equipment documents the author's work as the Boeing GPS Space and Ground Segment Manager, developing and using predictive algorithms to identify premature aging in normal appearing engineering measurement telemetry from electrical and electro-mechanical equipment on U.S. Air Force GPS satellites and documented in monthly and quarterly on-orbit test reports as CDRLs and the NASA/Fairchild/U.C. Berkeley Extreme Ultra-Violet Explorer satellite, a sister ship to the NASA Hubble space telescope. Now called prognostics and health management or PHM, predictive algorithms in PHM were developed by the author and used on the U.S. Air Force's GPS Block I space-based navigation program. PHM was first used by the author starting in 1979 to predict on-board GPS satellite atomic frequency standard failures for replacement on the initial GPS constellation of MEO satellites that were operating in a 12,000 mile altitude, inclined 63 degrees, circular Earth orbit for achieving the maximum navigation system performance during multi-military service system-wide testing that would justify funding by the DoD. The 12 Boeing Block 1 GPS satellite constellation was used to win program funding by the author from the Department of Defense resulting in two follow-on contracts for Boeing for 28 additional Block II GPS satellites and 12 Block IIA satellites with improvements based on the results from the author's routine prognostic analysis he completed to improve GPS satellite equipment and payload performance and reliability. With the Air Force's GPS program funded by the DoD, the two existing, Navy satellite-based navigation and timing programs called TIMATION and TRANSIT were retired.
About the Author: The author is an award winning spacecraft designer, winning awards from INTELSAT for the design of the 12 INTELSAT VII geostationary communications satellite, Boeing and the U.S. the Air Force for his technical contributions and leadership that led to the funding of the GPS program by the DoD as the Boeing GPS Space & Ground Segment Manager. The author has over 30 years experience in the design, manufacture and test of military, NASA and commercial satellites, ground stations, missiles and launch vehicles as an RF and digital design engineer, systems engineer, Engineering Manager and Director at companies such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, British Aerospace, United Technologies, LORAL and L3 Communications. The authored pioneered the use of predictive algorithms on the GPS satellites to illustrate and identify the presence of premature Aging in satellite subsystem and payload equipment analog telemetry and determine remaining usable life as the Boeing/Air Force's GPS Space and Ground Segment Manager on GPS satellites at the factory, launch pad and on on-orbit and on the General Dynamics Atlas E/F launch vehicles used to launch GPS Block I satellites into a 63 degree inclination, 12 hour circular orbit beginning in 1979 and the author improved the design of Boeing's 28 Block II satellites and 12 more Block IIA satellites from the prognostic analysis results the author obtained from the 12 Boeing Block I GPS satellites. The author was also the Air Force's Titan, Boeing IUS solid rocket motor and Scramjet Test Manager at the United Technologies, CSD rocket testing facility located in the Coyote Hills, South San Jose California. As the Program Manager of the U.C. Berkeley/NASA EUVE low earth orbiting space science program, Space Sciences Laboratory, the author was requested to complete a prognostic analysis on the on-orbit NASA EUVE low earth orbiting satellite in 1994 and 1995. The results were published in conjunction with Lockheed Martin's reliability engineers from the Advanced Development Center located in Sunnyvale CA for use on the U.S. Navy Trident D5 ICBM program. The intent of this book is to illustrate that telemetry has increased importance from nice-to-have engineering data to information critical to achieving mission success up from about 85% since launching payloads to space began.