Where: ALTEN Technology

For: Blue Canyon Technologies

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This project was one I was on at ALTEN Technology, which was contracted to provide testing resources to Blue Canyon Technologies. The Kyber EPS was brand new to BCT, so test procedures and equipment were very preliminary at the start of the contract. I worked with BCT's Electrical Test Team and a few others from the ALTEN Quality Team to develop and streamline testing methods, as well as train new BCT test engineers.

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The new Kyber EPS was utilized in BCT flight units in their Saturn-class microsat product line. Testing was performed at both board-level and subsystem-level. The test procedures were in a preliminary revision at the beginning of the ALTEN-BCT contract, as many design and test details were still unknown. I supported procedure development and updates which occurred in parallel with test equipment updates, and eventually assisted with automating the majority of the procedure. At the beginning, the procedure required manual setup for every section, including interconnection of unit pins using a breakout box and therefore carried high risk in damage to the UUT from test operator error. Furthermore, at that point data logging was not yet an implemented feature so unit behavior was reliant on operator discretion and attention.  While at BCT, I helped to improve the test setups, revise the procedure, and debug the scripts used to automate the test and data collection. By the end of the contract between ALTEN and BCT, risk and time to test were significantly reduced; the duration of one electrical test went from spanning a day and a half to being completed in approx. 3 hours.

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I certainly learned a lot during my time at BCT and truly enjoyed working with everyone there!