 Subunit 3.5, Implementation, and Phase C. Implementation includes the final phases of the system lifecycle. During implementation, the system design is completed, the system components are built and purchased, the system is integrated and tested, and then operated throughout its defined lifespan. As you enter implementation, there are two primary tasks to be performed. One is to complete the system design. One example for additional design considerations for a flight system is the launch vehicle interface. So again, you went through a preliminary design review in Phase B, but now you have to complete your design. And so during this completion of the design, one of the things that will happen is NASA doesn't usually assign a launch vehicle to a mission, in many cases, until you get into the implementation phase. I think there's a consideration that not all missions make it through the first phases and get to implementation. So either they end up running over cost or falling behind schedule or there's some assessment that they can't be technically completed. And so there's a hesitancy to actually assign the contract for the rocket to launch this satellite until you get into implementation. And so what will happen is you're defining a satellite early on through preliminary design, but you don't quite know what rocket you're going to be riding on. So once the rocket is chosen, now the team has to go back and complete the design of the satellite to make sure it will properly interface with the rocket that's been chosen, the launch vehicle, and that it also is going to be able to survive the launch environment. Every rocket has a different launch environment, the vibration environment, the acoustic environment, and again, the technical interface between the spacecraft and the launch vehicle. So the satellite team needs to go back and refine their design to make sure it's going to be compatible with the specific vehicle that they're going to be launching on. So once the design is complete, the remainder of this initial part of implementation or phase C is going to be focused on procuring or building all the required system hardware and software components. As these components are delivered, they must be evaluated or verified to ensure that their capabilities and performance meet defined detailed requirements and that the interfaces meet the defined interface requirements. So again, you're building all these components or buying them separately. Now you want to make sure you've defined how they need to perform, say a thruster. You've defined how much thrust needs to come out. And you want to take that thruster you just purchased and make sure that it performs the way you wanted it to. You've also defined how heavy that thruster can be. So you want to put it on a scale and make sure that in the end, the requirement you had for how much mass the thruster could have is being met by the thruster that you purchased. So you're verifying that this thruster you bought can meet all of the requirements for performance and capability that you've defined earlier in your requirements development process. And so the other thing is, remember, this thruster has to plug on to the system and so it might have to interact with the power system and has to interact with the rest of the propulsion system and those interfaces were defined in requirements. And again, you want to make sure that this thruster you purchased will be able to meet all those interface requirements. Now, again, in this phase, you're not actually building up the satellite yet. You're just procuring the individual components and making sure that they meet their requirements. The actual building of the satellite will come a little bit later, but at this point, your verification is all being done at the component level. Phase C activities include developing a baseline detail design that's compatible with all the requirements down to the lowest level that you've defined in earlier periods. Completing plans for system integration and testing. This will be the part where you're going to actually put the system together and test that at a full system level, it operates properly and you have to have all your plans laid out in phase C to be able to do that. Procuring or building all of the system components so you're verifying the capability and the performance of each one of the components against these requirements. You're also looking again at the component interfaces to make sure that they're all clearly being met by the component that you've actually purchased looking back at your requirements. You're preparing the launch site check out an operations plan and the post launch operations and activation plan. So even though you're far away still maybe from launching, you are starting to make sure that the system as it's maturing that you've got a clear path on how you're going to actually launch and operate the system and that's being defined at this early stage here in phase C. You're going to now go into implementation and actually take all the work you've done on requirements and design. You're going to finish up your designing and now you're going to actually start to build. And so when you think of a curve of cost, you could see that over the time in this lifecycle cost has been going up right in pre phase A. You were spending maybe a minimal amount of money in phase A and then in phase B you were continuing to increase your staff to bring on more people to do more analysis more experts in certain fields to help you get to a higher level of fidelity. And now once you've been approved that confirmation or KDPC key decision point C to move on into implementation now you're really ramping up because now you're going to start to put out procurement sometimes right after the key decision point meeting people will run out in the hallway and start making phone calls because sometimes there are long lead parts pieces of equipment for the spacecraft that have to be procured very early you guys are going to take a long time to manufacture and they could become something that holds up your schedule and so as soon as you're told you're go to go through implementation you'll immediately start to buy your long lead parts because your design has been maturing you know what you need you're now given the go ahead which means you have the money to go through the implementation phase and so you're moving on at that point and so in phase C you see a picture here of the fuel tank for one of our missions this was from the Solar Dynamics Observatory which is on orbit in geostationary orbit this is what's happening in phase C you finish your design and now you're actually bringing the parts together not the full spacecraft but the parts of the spacecraft and you're testing them at the component or subsystem or element level so here you see a fuel tank it's got heater ribbons around it the silver ribbons are actually heaters on the tank there are thermistors connected so now that tank is going to have to connect up to both it's a propellant holding tank but it's going to have to connect up to your electrical system your computer systems a lot of connections to this tank but you're only working at the component level to make sure the tank is right it's built right and that it survives its environment so what you're going to do is take this tank and you're going to put it through and vibrate it you're going to put it through heat and cold and you're going to do all the things that it'll in the environment it will need to survive both for launch and on orbit you're going to test it at the component level you're going to make sure that this component of the spacecraft has been built properly you go back to your requirements that you originally set back in phase A and B and you make sure that you can verify that the requirements have been met by the specific part of the spacecraft and that's what phase C is really focused on is that all the components meet the specifications that they were set out to meet so you can guarantee that you can more or less guarantee when you put the whole spacecraft together it should be able to operate the way you expected the primary technical review in phase C it's the critical design review and there's also a system integration review and we'll talk about both of them so the critical design review we talked about a preliminary design review back in phase B and so similarly there will be a series of lower level component and subsystem reviews that are looking at the design maturity here in phase C but that series of reviews peer reviews and subsystem reviews will all lead up to a major system review called the system critical design review and so at this point you're going to be looking at all the the detailed design work that you've done and the external review technical review team will be coming in to assess whether your design is going to be able to meet the requirements that have been laid out for it with adequate resource margins and an acceptable level of risk and so they'll be looking at things like you've defined a certain mass for this whole satellite can't be heavier than a certain amount or the launch vehicle won't be able to launch in and so they're going to see that does your current design and the way you've laid this out look like you'll be able to complete the work to build the spacecraft without going over that mass limit that you have for the system design the interfaces and making sure that they've been matured enough to proceed with the fabrication, assembly, integration and test of the system they'll make sure that the system documentation is mature enough to allow for proceeding with that fabrication, assembly, integration and test as well so do you have all your test plans and all your test procedures identified and the integration process is well defined so that they can say that it looks like you can mature through and get the system actually built and integrated they'll also be looking to see that your system verification and validation plans are complete all the way down to the lower level to make sure that you're going to be able to both verify and validate the components all the way up through the subsystems and all the way through the full system as you start to build up the spacecraft during the next phase they're going to look for adequate technical and programmatic resource margins and make sure that again you can within the money and the schedule you have available complete the development and not have to end up asking for more funds or not meeting your launch date or whatever your other constraints are they'll also be looking at your risks to make sure that all your risks to mission success have been identified, assessed and that you have plans and the resources in place to effectively manage those risks they'll also be looking at your safety, reliability quality and other concerns that may impact your mission success and that they've all been identified and considered so this is all again right before you're going to go off and start to integrate and build the system this critical design review is kind of the key review to make sure you're ready to take all those components and start to build them into an actual spacecraft and so this is really a major milestone in the development of a new system and this is where you may have already prior to the critical design review started to procure some long lead parts and there's always a process that says gee, if I haven't finished my design should I really allow anyone to go off and buy any long lead parts because maybe those parts will be the wrong parts once I've completed my critical design review because the design may have changed a bit well in some cases it'll take years to develop flight hardware and so sometimes you have to build some of the components before you actually get through this review but what'll happen is that'll have to go through a review cycle of its own to make sure that every one of the stakeholders approves that yes you can buy some of this material early because it really is critical to do early and the requirements in that area are pretty well defined and we assume it would be safe for you to go ahead and buy those things early otherwise the critical design review is really that key review where after that review you're kind of given the go ahead to buy all of the rest of the components because after the critical design review has been approved it's now assumed that you have a design that you'll just be procuring and building from and so at this point you kind of have to go ahead to go ahead and get all of your other components purchased and then you'll be able to start to put the system together now again at the end of the critical design review the design review team is going to want to know back to the preliminary design did I close out all of the actions so did the design team look back at all the preliminary design review actions that were assigned and did they close them all out to the satisfaction of the review team so again that'll be kind of one of the factors that are reviewed in critical design review as well the second technical review that happens in phase C is the system integration review this review is a predicate to going into the integration phase of the technical development of the system so right you've got all these components and you like to now put them together and create a system out of them and so a system integration review says okay let me bring that technical group of experts in one more time and say are you really ready to do that and so you've passed through your critical design review you're headed off and now you're ready you think you've got everything ready to go ahead and start to integrate and so the system integration review the technical review team will look at things like your integration plans and procedures to make sure that they've all been completed and approved internally by the team so they're going to want to look for that the managers have all signed off on their plans and that you're all ready to go you've got all your procedures on how you're going to actually take the components and turn them into a system your component verification results are satisfactory so when you did previous to this you've done a lot of testing of the individual components that you're bringing in to verify that they meet their requirements as defined at the lowest level and so the system integration review includes looking to say did they all pass the reviews are you really ready to go forward and start to integrate them into a full system integration procedures and workflow have been defined and documented integration personnel have all gotten required training a lot of satellite integration happens in clean rooms very clean environments and very closed in spaces there's a lot of heavy equipment involved so a lot of the integration people that'll be working on the project have to have specific training on working in close quarters working with heavy equipment working in a clean room environment and so you have to make sure that everyone's certified to be in the environment that all has to get done and the technical team wants to make sure that that's done prior to actually starting the integration so it doesn't hold anything up and again the technical team is going to want to know that any open actions from the critical design review have been closed out as well now one of the things to keep in mind is that these big major reviews there's also they're the key ones they're the ones that are going to allow the system to go to the next level of maturity if you pass through them there's also test readiness reviews so whether you're going to be testing a component or testing a full system there'll be some test reviews done right before you go into each test phase to make sure that all the defined procedures are clearly you know they're all approved they've been all developed well before you go to that specific test and start to perform it so those are all done at a very low level with engineering peers just a few people sitting around a table sometimes and making sure that you're ready to go into that test but so what we're talking about are the major reviews where a big external team is going to come in and really make sure you're ready to proceed there are no additional resources for this subunit feel free to skip ahead to the next video