Cryo-Tracker ® Mass Gauging System Hardware and Flight Qualification Risk Reduction Program

®Mass Gauging System (MGS) hardware. The goal of this project was to begin the flight-verification process for the Cryo-Tracker ® MGS hardware with the main objective of reducing any technical and programmatic risks for NASA or commercial vehicle programs that will be responsible for taking the MGS through the flight qualification and acceptance testing phase of the verification process. The flight verification process for launch vehicle hardware, as dictated by MIL-STD-1540D and MIL HDBK-340A, was followed in this project. Significant accomplishments of this project discussed in this paper include development of flight qualification plans for each of the major units of the MGS, obtainment of probe material property data at cryogenic temperatures, verification of probe structural margins under simulated thermal and vibration loads using finite-element-analysis (FEA), development of a flight avionics engineering development unit, and qualification of a direct-pass feed-through that eliminates cryogenic electrical connectors at the tank bulkhead.