How to Train your Space Tester: Big Picture Challenges Facing Space Vehicle Test

TL;DR

This paper discusses the major challenges in space vehicle testing, including safety, procedures, and operator proficiency, highlighting the need for cultural shifts and new methods to improve risk management and testing practices.

Contribution

It identifies four key challenges in space vehicle testing and proposes considerations for evolving testing culture, procedures, safety nets, and operator qualifications.

Findings

Testing limits of space capabilities requires cultural change.

Limited contingency procedures constrain operations.

Need for more agile fault-detection methods.

Abstract

Fundamental big-picture challenges face the enterprise of burgeoning space test, which may also have an impact on the syllabus and training of a possible future Space Test Pilot School. Test fundamentals and test conduct under stresses of time and fuel will be where the rubber meets the road. This paper specifically discusses four of those challenges, and their impact on US Space Force operators. (1) Testing limits of space capabilities. Space vehicles have traditionally imposed very strict operating limits. A culture shift from the top-down will be required before space testers are allowed to test spacecraft limits as freely as air-breathing test pilots do today. (2) Permitted procedures. There are a limited number of contingency procedures at a space operator's disposal, further constrained within themselves. (3) Safety nets. A discussion of space-specific methods that mitigate risks in operations, and the need for more agile fault-detection. (4) Operator proficiency. The qualifications and recency of a tester at the controls must be considered in the context of a single misstep potentially resulting in the entire asset being lost. We suggest that hours in high-risk test per spacecraft may become the defining factor for high-risk space test execution.