Health Monitoring of Reuseable Rockets: Basics for Sensor Selection

Abstract With regard to the space field, number of sensors has grown for a middle-sized spacecraft from more than 500 at beginning twenty-first century [1] several thousands nowadays applications. Meanwhile, Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLVs) moved their steps demonstrators commercial working systems. As result, Health Monitoring (HM) is conquered its own in field and are primary elements required implementing monitoring unit. The innovative concept reusable rockets requires, point view HM implementation, not only evaluation vehicle health status but also prediction reusability individual subsystems w.r.t. next launch cycle. Therefore, goal this work divided two parts. former identify most critical points development rockets, focusing on theoretical conditions analysis or failures. latter discuss sensing units useful addressing defined points, describing possible approaches system conditions. Among them, piezoelectric units, fiber optics, imaging conductive layers can be identified enhancing comprehension