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Spacecraft Thrusters Diagnosis with Vertices Principal Component Analysis:
Application to the Rendez-vous Phase of the Mars Sample Return Mission
Imen GUEDDI , Othman NASRI , Kamel BENOTHMAN , Philippe DAGUE
1 2 3 4
imen.gueddi@gmail.com,
1
othman.nasri@eniso.rnu.tn,
2
kamelbenothman@yahoo.fr,
3
philippe.dague@lri.fr.
4
Abstract
Fault detection
Fault isolation
This paper presents a fault diagnosis system of the chaser thrusters used during the rendez-vous phase of
the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. The Vertices Principal Component Analysis (VPCA) has been
adopted as an extension method of the classical principal component analysis for interval valued data.
The VPCA has been used to estimate the relationships between the various variables of the process. To
ensure the feasibility of the proposed FDI approach, a set of interval valued data provided by the
industrial ''high-fidelity'' simulator of the MSR and representing the opening rates of the spacecraft
thrusters has been considered. The test results demonstrate that the fault detection and isolation are
successfully accomplished.
Keywords: Fault diagnosis, MSR, PCA, Reaction Wheel (RW), SPE, Variable
reconstruction, VPCA
Application
Mars Sample Return mission, plans collecting samples from Mars and then returning to earth. The diagnosis process
concerns only the 5th step of this mission. This step is called the "rendez-vous". Only the last 100 meters of the rendez-
vous/capture phase are considered the most critical for the occurrence of failures. Thrusters are considered as the most
important features of the propulsion system assuring the attitude control of the spacecraft. These propulsive devices are
capable of generating a thrust to control the attitude and a torque to control the rotation. Therefore, the failure of one or
more thrusters can cause a spacecraft to lose its ability to maintain position and hence potentially causing a mission
failure. So, the objective of this application is to detect and isolate the thrusters' faults of the MSR chaser spacecraft,
considering that the propulsion system is composed of 8 thrusters.
Ecole Nationale d'Ingnieurs de Sousse, Adresse : BP 264 Sousse Erriadh 4023 Tel: +216 73 369 500 Fax: +216 73 369 506
E-mail: imen.gueddi@gmail.com
Results
Faults Detection
VPCA Model
Faults Isolation
Conclusion
Algorithm
Goals
Several indexes are used to
represent any variations in the
data and thereby to detect
defaults:
Residual
subspace
Principal
subspace
Both
subspaces
SPE (Squared
Prediction
Error)
T
2
(Hotelling) D
m
(Mahalanobis
distance)
For k' =1 2
m
N
PCA model
Once a fault has been detected, it
is necessary to identify and
isolate the faulty variables :
An isolation strategy based on the variable
reconstruction approach:
Assumes that each
variable is faulty
Suggests to
reconstruct it
For k' =1 2
m
N
For R =1 m

)

If Aspe
R
< 1 then
the R
th
variable is faulty

The index threshold:

=
,

If then
a fault is detected

Interval valued data
m variables
N observation
Vertices extraction
Single valued data
m variables
2
m
N observation
Standar PCA

, ,

(),

() , ,

(),

()

()

()

()

()

()

()

()

()

VPCA
,

Fault detection

)
Fault isolation

If

<
If
The R
th
variable is faulty

, =

=
= +
= +
No
fault
=

VPCA Pricnipal
The linear transformation of
Number of required principal component using: l is fixed: l<m
=

=
+

System partionned
Residual Principal
N ' = 2
m
N

P is the matrix of the eigenvectors of the covariance matrix
l: number of retained PCs
=,..,
( )
VPCA method is an analysis using both
between and within observations variations.
Interval valued data :
N observation and m variables
Single valued data :
N2
m
observation and m variables
the VPCA method is considered
computationally cumbersome. The number of
rows of the matrix after transformation depends
exponentially on the number of variables and
linearly on the number of observation units. Classic PCA SPE for fault detection
An approach based on the reconstruction
principal for fault isolation
!
Necessity to develop a
new approach
generalizing the PCA
to interval valued data:
Exploiting the interval
arithmetic
System with m=8 and N=13514:
X
min
X
max
Bounds of Faults- free
sets of data
X
min
X
max
Sets 1: Fault injected to
thruster 1 (blocked open)
1.1
1.1
2.1
VRE: l=5
CPV: l=4 (99,99% of variance)
Adopted system
with l=4 principal
components
Two principal peaks exceed the SPE threshold:
t
1
= [200s, 210s]
X
min
X
max
Sets 2: Fault injected to
thruster 2 (blocked open) 2.1
t
2
= [400s, 410s]
Detection of two faults:
Zone
1
: 2
m
t
1
Zone
2
: 2
m
t
2
Two failures in the thrusters
are to be considered
At an instant t zone
1

Aspe
1
is lower than 1: in this zone,
the first thruster is the faulty one.
At an instant t zone
2

Aspe
2
is lower than 1: in this zone,
the second thruster is the faulty one.
Two faulty variables were
successfully isolated
The Variance of the Reconstruction Error (VRE):
The Cumulative Percent of Variance (CPV):
l: number of retained PCs
=,..,
( )
PCAlike most diagnosis approachs is developped for the analysis of single valued data.
Real world data analysis is usually affected by different type of uncertainty due to measurement
errors, computation errors, imprecision related to the method adopted for estimating the data.
Standard PCA Result of a simplification Imprecision in the diagnosis results
The VPCA (Vertices Principal Component Analysis) and the CPCA (Centers Principal
Component Analysis) the most common methods that extend the PCAto a set of interval
type data but are not yet applied to diagnosis procedures.