§ 450.119 - Trajectory analysis for malfunction flight.

§ 450.119 Trajectory analysis for malfunction flight.

(a) General. A flight safety analysis must include a trajectory analysis that establishes -

(1) The vehicle's deviation capability in the event of a malfunction during flight,

(2) The trajectory dispersion resulting from reasonably foreseeable malfunctions, and

(3) For vehicles using flight abort as a hazard control strategy under § 450.108, trajectory data or parameters that describe the limits of a useful mission. The FAA does not consider the collection of data related to a failure to be a useful mission.

(b) Analysis constraints. A malfunction trajectory analysis must account for each cause of a malfunction flight, including software and hardware failures, for every period of normal flight. The analysis for each type of malfunction must have sufficient temporal and spatial resolution to establish flight safety limits, if any, and individual risk contours that are smooth and continuous. The analysis must account for -

(1) The relative probability of occurrence of each malfunction;

(2) The probability distribution of position and velocity of the vehicle when each malfunction trajectory will terminate due to vehicle breakup, ground impact, or orbital insertion along with the cause of termination and the state of the vehicle;

(3) The parameters with a significant influence on a vehicle's flight behavior from the time a malfunction begins to cause a flight deviation until the time each malfunction trajectory will terminate due to vehicle breakup, ground impact, or orbital insertion; and

(4) The potential for failure of the flight safety system, if any.

(c) Application requirements. An applicant must submit -

(1) A description of the methodology used to characterize the vehicle's flight behavior throughout malfunction flight, in accordance with § 450.115(c).

(2) A description of the methodology used to determine the limits of a useful mission, in accordance with § 450.115(c).

(3) A description of the input data used to characterize the vehicle's malfunction flight behavior, including:

(i) A list of each cause of malfunction flight considered;

(ii) A list of each type of malfunction flight for which malfunction flight behavior was characterized; and

(iii) A quantitative description of the parameters, including uncertainties, with a significant influence on the vehicle's malfunction behavior for each type of malfunction flight characterized.

(4) Representative malfunction flight trajectory analysis outputs, including the position and velocity as a function of flight time for -

(i) Each set of trajectories that characterizes a type of malfunction flight;

(ii) The probability of each set of trajectories that characterizes a type of malfunction flight; and

(iii) A set of trajectories that characterizes the limits of a useful mission as described in paragraph (a)(3) of this section.