Selection and Customization of Product Assurance Requirements applied to Small Satellites

Abstract

The use of small satellites has become a technological trend in the aerospace sector. To guarantee the specified reliability, every space mission requires adequate product assurance requirements, so that the risks and costs of the program are at predefined levels. This article proposes a process for selecting and customizing product assurance requirements applied to small satellites, aiming gains in manufacturing time, scope or cost, without increasing the risk of project execution. The proposed process cannot affect the objective of the mission, ensuring that all requirements successfully established are met. For this, a combination of two methods is proposed: AHP-Sort and the Borda method. The AHP-Sort is a variation of the Analytic Hierarchy Process, known as AHP methodology. Its use is indicated for classification and reduction of alternatives. In this work, specifications defined by the stakeholders are used, such as risk, lifetime and type of mission, which will be analyzed under the degree of importance, pair to pair, which will allow the classification of satellites in A, B, C or D. Once those classes are defined, the requirements referring to the different disciplines of the product assuranceare alocated to each class, compatible with the risk margin accepted for the mission. To complete the selection and customization of product assurance requirements, the Borda method will be used for ordering and ranking the requirements of each product assurance discipline by specialists who will make an assessment, establishing notes for each requirement, which, after being compiled, will indicate the one’s that must be apllied to each class of satellite.