Write the rule before you need it.
When a fault happens, nobody on the ground can react in time. Whatever the spacecraft does next was decided months earlier, by whoever wrote its rules. Your team will read a mission that went wrong and write the rule that should have been there.
The spacecraft met a fault it had no rule for. What should the rule have said?
Learning outcomes · University
What you should be able to do, and the evidence that shows it.
- 01By the end of this mission, the learner will be able to design a safe mission policy that holds under the fault this run experienced, and demonstrate this by stating the condition, the action and the evidence each rests on.
- 02By the end of this mission, the learner will be able to assess what this deterministic operations run establishes about policy safety and what it withholds, and demonstrate this by classifying the channels correctly.
- 03By the end of this mission, the learner will be able to validate the limits of treating a policy tested in this runtime as safe to fly, and demonstrate this by stating the qualification evidence that would still be required.
Before we start
A quick check of what you already know. There is no score.
The idea behind the mission
A mission policy is a set of rules written in advance: when this condition holds, take this action. The spacecraft follows them alone.
Rules are written in advance
A spacecraft cannot ask for help in time. Every response to a fault has to be written before launch, as a condition the spacecraft can test and an action it can take. A general instruction to be careful is not a rule. A condition the spacecraft can test, paired with an action it can take, is.
Predict before you run
Before you look: what do you think a spacecraft should do first when something goes wrong, and why?
What should a spacecraft do first when something goes wrong, and why?
At least 20 characters — say what you expect and why.
Configure the mission
This is the set-up you will run. It is fixed on purpose, so everyone in the class is reading the same evidence.
Baseline case
This mission
- Write your prediction first.
- Find when the fault took hold, not just that it did.
- These readings come from a model, not from a real mission.
Units stay attached to every result: angles in degrees (°), time in seconds (s), power in watts (W), energy in watt-hours (Wh), battery state in percent (%), and elevation in degrees (°) where available.
Run the Digital Twin
Run the mission and collect its readings.
Baseline
This mission
Read the evidence
Find the moment things changed, then ask what a rule could have checked before that point.
Run the Twin to produce evidence.
Make the engineering decision
Write one rule, as a condition and an action, and cite the reading that justifies it.
Write one rule the policy should contain.
What this does not prove
What this mission shows
- My prediction
- The mission readings for this run
- Where each number came from
- One thing this model does not cover
What it does not establish
- These mission readings are produced by a model. No real fault occurred.
- A rule that works here has not been shown to be safe on real hardware.
- This lesson is not an operational assurance result.
Name one thing this model does not tell you about whether your rule is safe to fly.
Show what you understood
Formative feedback for you and your teacher. There is no official grade.
A policy that only reacts once the battery is already flat is:
Which reading shows the policy failed to protect the mission?
Write one rule the policy should contain, as a condition and an action.
Name one thing this model does not tell you about whether your rule is safe to fly.
Revisit the mission evidence
Formative · not an official grade
No formative evidence has been recorded yet.
Next: Write your prediction, run both set-ups, then pick the evidence that supports your answer.
Formative guidance only. Official grade: none. A teacher still reviews your written reasoning.