Surviving Orbit the DIY Way

Chapter 4. Testing Formalism

There is functional testing, as opposed to environmental testing, which is different from launch survivability testing—oh my, so many tests. Functional testing is where you verify whether a component works or not, either isolated or when integrated into your overall satellite. All the steps laid out previously provide you with a functional test schedule.

Environmental testing is where you test that a working component continues to work even when subject to the rigors of space. This primarily means vacuum testing and thermal testing. A homemade thermal vacuum chamber will do nicely. This testing should be done for each of the isolated components. Vacuum testing is a pain, because you had to:

1. Insert the part into your thermal vacuum chamber
2. Set up some test measurement system
3. Get to vacuum, run the test
4. Repressurize
5. Test the component once it comes out of thermal vacuum chamber, to ensure repressurizing didn’t damage everything

I recommend you do thermal vacuum chamber testing after you’ve finished your functional testing. You will have to break down your full assembly and retest each component in isolation, which is tedious. However, you will already have verified your original design and assembly and integration, so the bulk of this book is the test of survivability. Further, because you know integration works, you can reduce the number of test steps while maintaining accuracy.

NASA CubeSat Requirements

NASA has one formal specification (among many) ...