Causes of Power-Related Satellite Failures

Satellite on-orbit failures are rare, but costly. Failures cumulatively account for losses that total many billions of dollars. In order to understand the causes of power- system related failures, publicly-available data sources were analyzed to determine the origin of power-system related failures of spacecraft. Data from reported failures and anomalies of commercial and scientific satellites from the period 1990-2006 were analyzed. Military, GPS, and reconnaissance satellites were not included in the data set. The major failures were divided into nine primary categories: Impact or collision induced failures, battery failures, solar array mechanical failures, attitude control failures, failures due to plasma-discharge events, cell failures, other array failures, darkening of glass or solar reflectors, and cell interconnect failure. These failures account for a reported cumulative loss of 4.4 billion dollars. These data were analyzed to show the cause of each type of failure as a percentage of the total number of failures, and the net cost of each type of failure