System condition monitoring and maintenance

[bill nye scienceguy!]

hi

in my engineering design class I've been set a short (1000 word) project on the ulysses space probe or more specifically system condition monitoring and maintenance for the mission. the trouble is, i don't really understand what that involves. can anyone enlighten me or direct me to some relevant material that will?

many thanks

 

[bill nye scienceguy!]

sorry, that question was probably quite vague. can someone tell me what type of sensors would be useful for condition monitoring inside a space probe? I am having real trouble finding anything useful on the net; I've been searching article journals using the engineering village and web of knowledge databases to no (or at least very little) avail.

 

[FredGarvin]

From a mechanical standpoint, condition monitoring usually consists of

- temperature measurements
- pressure measurements
- proximity measurements
- vibration measurements
- flow measurements

The individual or combination of those can do pretty well in monitoring the well being of a system. What type of instrumentation you use depends on the system.

You may want to have an EE chime in on what thy would do on their side of things.