• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.57-63
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• 2021

The launch vehicle (LV) separation detection interface of the satellite, which is designed to initiate the launch and early operation phase (LEOP) for S-band data transmission and the solar array deployment after the LV separation, is one of the hazard items at the launch site. Therefore, this interface should satisfy the single-fault tolerance requirement for the range safety. In this paper, we discuss the LV separation detection interfaces for two different satellite launch configurations and propose a method to guarantee for the satellite to start the LEOP even under the emergency case such as a partial separation from the LV. Furthermore, the proposed method meets the range safety requirement of the launch site. As this method only changes the external harness configuration of the satellite, it increases the reliability of the satellite early operation without any modification of the existing internal logics to detect the separation event.