AEROSPACE REPORT NUMBER: TOR-2010(8591)-20, FLIGHT UNIT QUALIFICATION GUIDELINES (30-JUN-2010)

AEROSPACE REPORT NUMBER: TOR-2010(8591)-20, FLIGHT UNIT QUALIFICATION GUIDELINES (30-JUN-2010)., The qualification of flight units must be appropriately planned and executed in order to ensure that design and/or manufacturing issues are identified early. This minimizes the potential for product delivery delays, increased cost due to flight unit rework, and at worst, anomalous system behavior or failure during testing at higher levels of assembly and/or on-orbit. Typical problems that result from inadequate qualification planning and/or execution are late or misinterpreted requirements, inadequate consideration of bounding conditions and performance parameters, failure to adequately qualify material, piece part or packaging technologies, and abbreviated testing which results in an inadequate understanding of variables or design margins. Other problems stem from faulty re-use assumptions for heritage hardware used in new applications or missions, configuration discrepancies between Development/Qualification models and flight production units, and changes to manufacturing processes without consideration for impact on the qualification baseline. This Flight Unit Qualification reference guide has been generated from industry and government best practices in order to provide the qualification practitioner and review authorities with a qualification process and governance framework. The guide provides a recommended qualification process, including defining roles and responsibilities of key participants at design and hardware milestones. It also strongly endorses the establishment of independent Qualification Review Boards or equivalent independent review authorities that objectively audit the qualification process and ensure rigor and thoroughness. The guidelines include a practical set of tools for architecting comprehensive qualification plans, executing tests, and reviewing qualification results. It provides a treatment of commonly encountered qualification scenarios including the desire to leverage heritage hardware and the necessity to retest in the event of anomalies.