by Owen Kurtin & Michael Flynn

Sometimes, you can get too close to what you are examining and lose perspective, like the famous story of the blind man, who, when guided to an elephant, thought he was touching a tree.

Why do satellite buses fail while so few payloads ever do? Why are bus failures so often in the power supply? If you are a satellite operator, manufacturer, customer or anyone who invests or otherwise has a stake in the space sector, these questions should never be far from your thoughts. The industry’s euphemism, "in-orbit anomalies," disguises the grievous effects these failures have on the business. Not only do insurance and finance costs go up, lowering margins and reducing the breadth and depth of the customer market that in-orbit assets can access (itself aggravating the cost problem), but losses make satellites themselves more expensive. Every failure encourages an ever-diminishing investment return resulting in more checks, more redundant systems, more weight, longer production cycles and more opportunities for an anomaly.

If we want perspective, it helps to strip away the mystery of the white room environment. Communications satellites typically consist of a main "bus," the frame or body of the satellite; a power subsystem usually fed by solar panels; attitude control and propulsion systems; and the communications antenna array. The satellite’s payload, generally consisting of a number of transponders, is historically far less likely to fail than other components. Transponders are radio transceivers that accept the signal received by the satellite’s receiving antenna, filter and amplify the signal, convert the frequency of the received signal as necessary, and transmit the signal back to Earth through the transmitting antenna. While tolerances for use in space are much more stringent than for terrestrial applications, the basic components of a transponder are comparable to their earthbound counterparts, and, therefore benefit from years of testing, standardization and mass production. Moreover, modern satellites carry many transponders and thus benefit further from (relatively speaking) mass production.

Satellite buses are less standardized equipment than are payloads. Buses have fewer and more customized parts. Moreover, manufacturers produce fewer satellite buses compared to transponders. Power supply subsystems in particular are low-volume products that are the result of complex manufacturing processes.

An obvious conclusion to draw is that the relatively high fail rates of buses and power systems result from a lack of standardization and (comparative) mass production. Subcontractors seem to have this more clearly in mind than primes. A recent Frost and Sullivan/Airclaims analysis reveals that although "anomalies" occur across all bus sizes and weight classes, there is a correlation between increasing size and complexity of buses and higher anomaly rates.

Why are larger, more complex buses made? Because the different sectors of the industry–operator, manufacturer, launch service providers–tacitly conspire to make satellites that carry more diverse payloads; that are more complex in function; that are heavier and require more powerful launch vehicles; which make greater demands on internal subsystems such as power supply, propulsion and heat dissipation; and which of course yield higher costs and margins that can hopefully be passed on to customers. More importantly, it is only during a downturn that people tend to critically examine what is wrong with an industry. Fail rates that might have been grudgingly accepted as part of the cost of doing business in the late ’90s, when the markets were awash with cash, are now unacceptable.

What is to be done? The satellite industry must move to a "plug and play" architecture, with a small number of standardized bus layouts and power configurations, and leave behind the current "plug and pray" model in which every satellite is an over-engineered, unique and extremely risky proposition. Satellite operators and manufacturers must collaborate in the development of a new model for satellites: satellites that are smaller, lighter, more standardized and more versatile, and which are therefore cheaper, faster and easier to build, finance, insure, launch, maintain and operate. Technology advances support decreasing size and weight and increasing reliability and versatility of satellite architecture. Standardization yields reliability, faster production cycles and deployment and cost savings; customization and gold-plating yield unreliability, delay and higher cost factors that cannot be supported in the current market environment. Redundancy itself can be the enemy of reliability, as multiple systems represent greater possibilities of failure and increase weight, power and shielding needs and stress on other systems.

At current satellite order rates and with five prime manufacturers, the only way to standardize is by horizontal conventions across primes, as well as by their subcontracting independent suppliers who must drive the primes where they do not want to go: to a "plug and play" environment.

Owen Kurtin and Michael Flynn are partners in the New York office of national law firm Sonnenschein Nath and Rosenthal LLP. They may be reached by e-mail at [email protected] and [email protected], respectively.