Lessions learned in WISE image quality
2010
The Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission launched in December of 2009 is a true success story. The
mission is performing beyond expectations on-orbit and maintained cost and schedule throughout. How does such a
thing happen? A team constantly focused on mission success is a key factor. Mission success is more than a program
meeting its ultimate science goals; it is also meeting schedule and cost goals to avoid cancellation. The WISE program
can attribute some of its success in achieving the image quality needed to meet science goals to lessons learned along the
way. A requirement was missed in early decomposition, the absence of which would have adversely affected end-to-end
system image quality. Fortunately, the ability of the cross-organizational team to focus on fixing the problem without
pointing fingers or waiting for paperwork was crucial in achieving a timely solution. Asking layman questions early in
the program could have revealed requirement flowdown misunderstandings between spacecraft control stability and
image processing needs. Such is the lesson learned with the WISE spacecraft Attitude Determination & Control
Subsystem (ADCS) jitter control and the image data reductions needs. Spacecraft motion can affect image quality in
numerous ways. Something as seemingly benign as different terminology being used by teammates in separate groups
working on data reduction, spacecraft ADCS, the instrument, mission operations, and the science proved to be a risk to
system image quality. While the spacecraft was meeting the allocated jitter requirement , the drift rate variation need was
not being met. This missing need was noticed about a year before launch and with a dedicated team effort, an adjustment
was made to the spacecraft ADCS control. WISE is meeting all image quality requirements on-orbit thanks to a diligent
team noticing something was missing before it was too late and applying their best effort to find a solution.
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
0
References
1
Citations
NaN
KQI