Mission Assurance Handbook for University-based Lean Satellites

A lean satellite is a satellite that utilizes non-traditional, risk-taking development and management approaches - with the aim to provide the value to the customer and/or stakeholders by realizing the satellite mission at low-cost and in short time. It is another name to express the nature of pico/nano/micro/small satellites. It is well known that the mission success rate of university-based lean satellites is much lower than those of traditional satellites or non-university-based lean satellites. In 2020, UNISEC (UNIversity Space Engineering Consortium) of Japan organized a series of online meetings to exchange the lessons learned from university satellite projects. Further analysis of the failure cases to extract their root causes led to making a handbook for mission assurance. The handbook gives summary of points to be kept in mind by faculty members and students to improve the mission success rate. The handbook is organized in the order of project life-cycle, i.e. from the mission definition to the operation with three additional chapters on project management, post-operation and sustainability of university satellite program. Although the handbook is based on the lessons learned of Japanese universities, many of those also apply to other countries and new space companies.