New horizons spacecraft comprehensive performance test development

Abstract

The New Horizons spacecraft was launched on January 19, 2006, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard a Lockheed Martin Atlas V launch vehicle. It is the first mission of NASA's New Frontiers program and will be the first spacecraft to visit Pluto and its moon Charon, arriving July 14, 2015. An extended mission would include visits to one or more Kuiper Belt objects between 2016 and 2020. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) was responsible for the design, manufacturing, and test for the New Horizons mission and is now conducting mission operations. In order for this long mission to be completed successfully, it was critical that the appropriate testing be planned and executed prior to launch to verify all applicable mission requirements. A Comprehensive Performance Test (CPT) was performed that provided baseline test results. The spacecraft was subsequently subjected to environmental tests such as acoustic, thermal vacuum, shock release and spin tests. It was moved from JHU/APL to the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) for environmental testing and to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for launch. The CPT was repeated numerous times throughout these tests and moves. Results that were not consistent with the baseline test results were carefully evaluated to determine whether they indicated a hardware problem or the possibility of a hardware problem occurring after launch. This paper discusses the development of the CPT, emphasizing the following: Selection of the requirements to be tested in the CPT, CPT building blocks , Building block development, CPT organization, CPT Challenges, CPT results, New Horizons Operations Simulator (NHOPS) certification using the CPT, Conclusions.