Fault detection and isolation of spacecraft thrusters by using principal component analysis

In this paper a model-based FDI approach is proposed to achieve both fault detection and isolation of a spacecraft thrusters during the rendezvous phase of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. To estimate the relationships between the various variable of the process, the principal component analysis (PCA) is adopted. To affirm the feasibility of the proposed FDI approach, historical data set representing the opening rates of the spacecraft thrusters are considered. Tests results demonstrate that detection and isolation of single faults are successfully accomplished.