On-board maintenance for long-life systems

Due to the low power, low cost, high reliability and high performance goals, the traditional approaches to fault-tolerant, ultra-reliable systems that rely on custom-built hardware and extensive component/subsystem replication will not be feasible for the new-generation spaceborne computing systems. In this paper, we present a new concept called "on-board maintenance". We classify on-board maintenance into three categories: preventive maintenance, perfective maintenance and corrective maintenance. For each type, we present its definition and propose some approaches to its realization.