8th Paolo Santini memorial lecture on safety of spaceflight structures - The application of fracture and damage control.

Since Apollo it has been necessary to ensure the safety of spaceflight structures by fracture control and damage tolerance methods. Fracture and damage control cover a wide range of structural and materials engineering disciplines. This paper presents a brief overview of the history, the current state of art, and new developments in implementing fracture and damage control to assure spaceflight structural integrity. • Fracture control has been developed and applied successfully to prevent catastrophic failure. • Fracture control is now a standard element in the verification of ESA's spaceflight hardware. • Technologies (fracture mechanics, NDI, material research) and standards are constantly improved. • Related ESA R&D results are implemented in analysis tools, which are made available to industry. • Challenges are adequate and efficient implementation for crewed and uncrewed critical missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]