Statistical Analysis of Small Satellite Reliability: 1990-2019

Small satellites have gone mainstream in the NewSpace era as it enables a multitude of opportunities either by employing a single satellite or a constellation of satellites. Small satellites weighing over 100 Kg are being commonly developed nowadays in the Newspace industries. On the other hand, even lighter satellites are gaining increased attention in recent years. Statistics show an 800\% increase in the number of satellites launched weighing less than 40 Kg in the last decade. This paper aims to support this growing interest of the satellite community to make smaller satellites by providing a reliability analysis of satellites weighing less than 40 Kg. A data set containing on-orbit failure data of 1043 satellites are gathered for the reliability analysis study. A combination of the Kaplan-Meier estimator for non-parametric and Weibull distribution for parametric analyses are used to identify the reliability trends. As a further investigation, the dataset is divided based on several categories: mass, launch year, mission, developer type, and orbit inclination to calculate their specific reliability trends. The results presented in this paper bridge the literature gap, provide the imperative reliability information, and support decision-making during the early design phases to eventually improve the reliability of small satellites.