Open AccessModern science and technology development has allowed creation of space technology with long (10 - 15 years) Lifetime, which resulted in increasing demand for its reliability.
Spacecraft reliability primarily depends on the reliability of electronic equipment, which is ensured by the choice of electronic components and redundant components.
A safety margin of construction taken into consideration at the designing stage ensures reliability of structural components. To evaluate design reliability a formula is proposed which is based on the safety factors and variation coefficients of mechanical characteristics of the material and load.
A technique of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Lavochkin Association" to ensure reliability is presented.
The paper considers the problems arising in predicting and validating reliability at the stage of creating a spacecraft of sustained operation. Thus the main problems are as follows: an error when using the exponential law of probability distribution for the highly complicated sustained operation systems, a lack of records of degradation processes in existing techniques for reliability evaluation of radio-electronic airborne equipment, a probability estimate of radioelectronic equipment hardness beyond the calculating reliability, non-well adequate and, for some positions, aged data on the failure rate of electronic components, listed in Directory 2006, and some insufficiently justified coefficients of Directory models.
The paper offers measures to solve abovementioned problems.