Spacecraft thrusters diagnosis with vertices principal component analysis: Application to the rendez-vous phase of the mars sample return mission

This paper presents a fault diagnosis system of the chaser thrusters used during the rendez-vous phase of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. The Vertices Principal Component Analysis (VPCA) has been adopted as an extension method of the classical principal component analysis for interval valued data. The VPCA has been used to estimate the relationships between the various variables of the process. To ensure the feasibility of the proposed FDI approach, a set of interval valued data provided by the industrial "high-fidelity" simulator of the MSR and representing the opening rates of the spacecraft thrusters has been considered. The test results demonstrate that the fault detection and isolation are successfully accomplished.