This document provides test methods and test requirements for design qualification and/or acceptance of small spacecraft or units. It provides the minimum test requirements and test methods to qualify the design and manufacturing methods of commercial small spacecraft and their units and to accept the final products.

This document places emphasis on achieving reliability against infant mortality after satellite launch to orbit while maintaining low cost and fast delivery.

This document is applied to satellites whose development methods are different from the ones used for traditional satellites that have little room for risk tolerance, as shown in Figure 1. The scope of this document encompasses different categories of small spacecraft, so-called mini-, micro, nano-, pico- and femto-, as well as CubeSat, spacecraft. Therefore, for the sake of convenience, the term “small spacecraft” is used throughout this document as a generic term.

This document includes CubeSat, as long as it is developed with the untraditional processes.

This document does not cover satellite deployment mechanisms, such as POD, as the verification requirements are defined in the Interface Control Document (ICD) with the launcher, such as ISO 26869.

This document does not cover software testing, although some tests such as functional test, mission test and end-to-end test are inherently used to test the software installed in the hardware being tested. General requirements and processes of satellite software testing can be found in various references, such as ECSS‑E‑ST40.

This document does not cover requirements regarding safety nor debris mitigation. Appropriate documents such as ISO 14620‑1 or ISO 24113 can be referred to. Other common requirements for small spacecraft can be found in Reference [14].