Quantitative methods for maturing and infusing advanced spacecraft technology

Today, the pace of spacecraft development has accelerated. Some of the pressure to accelerate comes from reduced budgets and government mandates to improve efficiency and rely on a greater extent on commercial systems and practices. More importantly, however, the accelerating pace is driven by new opportunities in science and technology. Future systems must respond to requirements to deliver higher resolution, greater responsiveness, and the increased need for interoperability. Additionally, NASA is being asked to field systems in less time and less cost without sacrificing mission reliability. To meet these often contradictory requirements, project managers must find new ways to infuse advanced technologies into spacecraft. As a result, most of NASA's science spacecraft incorporate an unprecedented amount of new technology. Candidate missions must identify new systems and components, analyze how the risks associated with new designs are to be mitigated, and identify methods for transferring resultant technology within and outside of NASA. Technology infusion in any application is a complex process. Incorporating an unproven new design into the development of an operational system presents significant cost, schedule, and technical risk. Historically, developers of operational systems have been cautious when incorporating new technology. New designs are often matured independent of operational systems and brought online only when they have proven their mettle. Demonstrator or precursor missions are used to test new designs before the commitment to a new technology is made. This is usually a very slow process; it can take years or decades to move a technology from the laboratory to fully operational status. The result is a stepwise evolution of capability - an approach that minimizes risk. Sometimes requirements evolve at a pace where demonstrator programs are not possible. When this occurs, project managers must accept the task of integrating complex new technologies into the mainstream development of an operational spacecraft. The tools used to assist the project manager with this task are surprisingly fragile. Techniques for measuring the readiness of a technology, for example, are highly qualitative. The importance of the language and culture surrounding the transfer of a technology from the laboratory to the application program is also generally underestimated. This paper focuses on these issues, examining the practice of maturing technology with special emphasis on methods that improve the integration of advanced designs during the development of operational spacecraft systems. Simplified practices are presented that could improve the accuracy and reduce the risk associated with estimating the readiness of a technology for use in space applications. While This work focuses on the challenges associated with building spacecraft, the authors believe the practices presented here could have broader application to other markets.