Engineering data summaries for space missions

New paradigms in spacecraft design are leading to radical changes in spacecraft operations. Increased constraints on resource usage and greater focus on operations costs require new approaches. One such method, beacon-based health monitoring, automates the task of routine health monitoring and migrates the process from the ground to the spacecraft. The performance of this automated method is further improved by a supplemental approach that monitors the long-term health of the spacecraft. Called “engineering data summarization”, this process has the responsibility of creating an on-board summary of the spacecraft state of health, tracking notable sensor values and trends as appropriate. Every few weeks, the summary is transmitted to ground operators. The purpose of the summary is to provide operators with context about the spacecraft´s state. Building on the systems for spacecraft operations being developed at Stanford´s Space Systems Development Laboratory, this paper is the first step in developing a methodical study of engineering data summarization. Five simple solutions are proposed and each is examined using newly-established competitive metrics. Analysis of the solutions characteristics leads to a definition of the problem´s “solution space”. These results point to the next steps needed for a thorough characterization of the engineering data summarization problem