Axient Congratulates NASA and RocketLab on NAFTU First Flight

Axient extends our congratulations to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) teams at Goddard Space Flight Center and Wallops Flight Facility and their commercial partner, RocketLab, on the successful inaugural Electron flight from WFF and the first flight of the NASA Autonomous Flight Termination Unit (NAFTU).

Axient is proud to have had the opportunity to contribute to NASA’s efforts to certify the NAFTU for operational use.  As part of the NAFTU Team (subcontractor on ASRC Federal Wallops Engineering Services contract), Axient performed formal system level, hardware/software-in-the-loop test activities to evaluate the functionality and performance of the NAFTU wrapper software and to verify and validate that it was implemented in a manner satisfying established requirements and applicable hazard analysis end items. To execute this test effort, Axient developed a test fixture that enabled user configuration and commanding of the NAFTUs, input of emulated sensor data, real-time monitoring of NAFTU status, and recording of NAFTU telemetry and output termination voltages. Axient executed several rounds of government-supervised testing at our facility in Melbourne, FL. The results of Axient test activities informed NASA decisions on the readiness of the NAFTU wrapper software to support operations.