Planning and implementing a formal test program for spaceflight instruments

Effective test management is essential in flight hardware development. The Test Engineer faces the challenging task of developing management tools uniquely suited to the organization and hardware to be tested. The Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE) project at the NASA Langley Research Center set up and successfully implemented an innovative management system for testing the Haloe instrument, an electro‐optic remote sensor for the Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite. This paper presents the basic elements of that system. Although the details given may not be specifically applicable, they will provide the Test Engineer with helpful, general guidelines.