Product Assurance in space engineering: the CubeSat case

The growing interest in space applications based on CubeSat-like technology requires a new approach even in the Product Assurance domain. In particular, more and more universities worldwide are developing a hands-on training educational programme and there is also an increasing demand among small companies and emerging countries of other-than-educational missions, such as technology demonstration and science application. These small and cheap platforms make extensive use of commercial-off-the-shelf components, so the standardization of nanosatellite environmental testing by tailoring the existing test standard for traditional space products is then a vital step to improve their dependability. This thesis aims at the definition of a novel Product Assurance approach for nanosatellites missions to limit the risk associated with the extended use of COTS and low-cost solutions, and to increase mission success of CubeSats in terms of reliability and availability while keeping them low cost and fast delivery systems. The project will be executed through the accomplishment of an analysis of the state of the art in the Space Product Assurance domain, including methodologies and tools, best practices and guidelines provided by ECSS, ISO and NASA standards. Moreover, a crucial point is to highlight the comparison between traditional space products and emerging innovative systems, with a focus on the features related to Product Assurance for CubeSats and nanosatellites missions. The thesis has been developed as part of the activity of CubeSat Team of Politecnico di Torino, applied to a real space project under development, a propulsion test platform called Esa-μProp. The results cover both the process of product design and AIV, including some recommendations about future development to guarantee quality assurance at programme, mission, system, and subsystem level.