Space and aerospace
The readiness review is the whole problem, and it arrives on a date you do not choose.
Every other question a hardware team answers is downstream of one: can this vehicle fly in this window, and what is the basis for saying so. IPAC is built to answer that question with the evidence already attached.
Who this is for.
Space and aerospace is the only industry IPAC is sold into today. That is a deliberate narrowing rather than a description of everything the platform could theoretically do.
- Spacecraft and launch-vehicle operators
- Small teams flying hardware they built, against a manifest they do not control, with a readiness review in front of every flight.
- Satellite and payload manufacturers
- Pedigree that has to survive handover to a prime, an integrator or a payload customer who was not in the room when the part was accepted.
- Aerospace and defense suppliers
- Machine shops, composites and TPS houses, avionics and harness builders, and test labs who have to evidence what they shipped, long after they shipped it.
Export control
What IPAC holds, and what it will not hold.
IPAC stores metadata, cryptographic hashes, and non-technical documents. It does not host ITAR-controlled technical data. Drawings, models, analysis, and test data stay in your systems; IPAC references them by SHA-256 digest, so a decision record can prove exactly which revision it was made against without the file ever leaving your control. The hosting reality behind that statement: IPAC runs on Google Cloud in us-central1, with no Assured Workloads enclave and no US-persons access control. If your program requires either, IPAC is not the place to put controlled technical data today. We would rather say that here than have you find it in week six.
What is stored, what is not, and where it runsThe nouns are yours, not ours.
IPAC does not ask a quality lead to translate hardware into somebody else’s vocabulary. The lens speaks the terms the shop floor and the review board already use.
- Missions and launch windows
- The window is the clock everything else is scored against. A condition that is survivable eight weeks out is a scrub three days out.
- Serialized parts and part pedigree
- Part number, serial, revision, lot, vendor, installed station, and every document behind it with a digest. Coverage is measured, not assumed.
- Approved vendors and qualifications
- AS9100D, NADCAP for composites, NDT, heat treat and chemical processing, ISO 17025 for calibration, with expiry dates that stop being a surprise.
- Certificates of conformance and material certs
- The two documents that turn a part into a part with a history. IPAC tracks which ones are missing, against which serial, installed where.
- First-article inspection
- AS9102 results held against the lot and the revision they were taken on, so a revision bump does not silently invalidate an acceptance.
- Nonconformances and MRB dispositions
- Use as is, rework, repair, scrap, the board that approved it, and the date it closed. A pattern across NCRs is a vendor question, not a part question.
Three decisions, in the shape a hardware team already makes them.
Each one names the parts and vendors in question, states the confidence as a number, and carries what it costs to wait. The reference environment below is a fictional operator, Meridian Orbital Systems, and a fictional vehicle, MV-1.
Hold flight readiness pending pedigree closure
DEC-2291 · MV-1 · MSN-004 · window opens in 9d
- Vehicle
- MV-1
- Launch provider
- rideshare, manifest pinned
Pedigree coverage across installed serialized parts is 91%. The 6 open chains are all thermal-protection tiles from one vendor, and all of them are already bonded.
Hold the readiness review, request the missing material certifications, and put the six tiles in front of the Material Review Board if the certs do not arrive within four days.
A readiness signature given on hardware whose material provenance cannot be evidenced, with a fixed window and no rework time behind it.
Installed parts
93%· High| Part | Station | Docs |
|---|---|---|
| MV1-TPS-0142SN 0007 | Aeroshell 4 | 2 / 3 |
| MV1-TPS-0142SN 0009 | Aeroshell 4 | 2 / 3 |
| MV1-STR-0885SN 0031 | Frame 12 | 3 / 3 |
| MV1-AVN-0310SN 0004 | Bay 2 | 3 / 3 |
Every serialized part carries a public pedigree address, so a prime or a payload customer can confirm provenance without an account.
Flight readiness against a window, with the parts holding it.
One disposition is holding the window
2 open · 18h until the MRB date on NCR-2026-0148
Nonconformance queue
| NCR | Found at | Disposition | Age |
|---|---|---|---|
| NCR-2026-0148MV1-TPS-0142 · SN 0009 | Receiving inspection | Awaiting MRB | 6d |
| NCR-2026-0143MV1-STR-0885 · SN 0031 | In-process | Rework | 11d |
| NCR-2026-0139MV1-AVN-0310 · SN 0004 | Acceptance test | Use as is | closed |
| NCR-2026-0131MV1-TPS-0142 · SN 0002 | Receiving inspection | Scrap | closed |
- Subject
- NCR-2026-0148
- MRB
- 3 approvers
Three of the four nonconformances raised this quarter trace to one approved vendor, which turns a part problem into a qualification question.
Disposition NCR-2026-0148 at the scheduled board and open a supplier corrective action against the vendor rather than the lot.
The same condition recurs on the next lot, inside the window, with no second source qualified.
Nonconformances and their Material Review Board dispositions.
Pedigree a prime can check without an account.
Handover is where pedigree usually degrades into a zip file and a promise. IPAC publishes a serialized part’s provenance at an unguessable address: part number, serial, revision, vendor, qualifications, first-article status, and the digest of every document on file.
Metadata and digests only. The documents themselves stay where they belong, and the page proves which ones were relied on without moving a single controlled byte.
- Part number
- MV1-TPS-0142
- Serial number
- SN 0007
- Revision
- C
- Approved vendor
- Tessera Composites
- Vendor qualifications
- AS9100D · NADCAP composites
- Lot
- TPS-LOT-2291
- First article
- AS9102 FAI accepted 2026-05-18
- Installed on
- MV-1 · aeroshell station 4
- 77ff05b2…a5035dverifiedCertificate of conformancev2 · reviewed
- c41a9de0…12bb47verifiedMaterial certificationv1 · reviewed
- 5b20e7c4…9d0f31verifiedFAI report (AS9102)v1 · reviewed
Metadata and digests only. No drawing, no analysis, no test data. Those stay in the operator’s systems and are referenced here by hash.
Public pedigree page at /verify/part/:token.
Bring us the last readiness review that went to the wire.
Ninety minutes on one real call from your program. If IPAC would not have surfaced it earlier, we will say so. The lens itself is described in detail on Space Systems Intelligence.