Workmanship standards and their application on ESA projects

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to describe some of the European Space Agency (ESA) workmanship standards which are based on industrial practices. Coordination with National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Centres on workmanship issues is also to be described.Design/methodology/approachThe first ESA (then ESRO) workmanship standard was published in 1972. It applied to the hand soldering of electronic assemblies and became a contractual document, either replacing, or supplementing a vast number of company standards that had existed in European manufacturing companies. Since then some 40 standards related to Materials and Processes have been developed by ESA, the majority of which are to be found in the European Cooperation for Space Standardization (ECSS) series of European standards.FindingsIt is shown that, where appropriate, the standards are backed by a number of ESA‐approved skills training schools which provide training courses that result in the certification of operators, inspectors and instructors.Originality/valueThe workmanship standards are periodically revised in order to take into account newly developed technologies, the results of failure analyses (lessons learnt), laboratory and field test results, as well as some particular requests from industry.