I work in this industry and let me explain how this happens. Despite being such a costly project, you can’t really hard-require unique connectors everywhere because of all of the competing requirements. Actually, connectors in particular tend to have a lot of conservative requirements such as being previously qualified, certain deratings, pin spacing, grounded back shells, etc. At the end of the day there’s only a handful of connector series used and stocked and it’s not feasible (at any cost really) to have no matching connectors whatsoever. Of course, you would normally try and make connectors either standardized with the same signals, or unique with no overlap in between.
I don’t know the details in this case but it could be like this: socket-type connectors are required on external connectors on the spacecraft (to prevent shorts when handling), with a harness in between which will never be removed. The harness would be symmetrical with pin-type connectors.
At some point it is decided a breakout box is required for testing and now you have created an opportunity to plug the breakout box in backwards.
Or the breakout box has a 100 pin connector on one side and needs to connect to 25 pieces of test equipment on the other side. You probably don’t have 25 different connectors to chose from, nor can you possibly demand custom requirements for every piece of test equipment.
Spacecraft are moving more towards local microcontrollers with local diagnostics so this kind of test equipment for every possible analogue signal is decreasing. In the case of motors, they would more likely be brushless now and you would rely on telemetry from motor drivers during both testing and flight instead of having this type of breakout box.
Connectors in aerospace are also following other industries and becoming more configurable at order time, including adding keys so you can have 10x “the same” connector but keyed so they only plug in one place. But it’s still not practical to demand all test equipment is configured like this.
I don’t know the details in this case but it could be like this: socket-type connectors are required on external connectors on the spacecraft (to prevent shorts when handling), with a harness in between which will never be removed. The harness would be symmetrical with pin-type connectors.
At some point it is decided a breakout box is required for testing and now you have created an opportunity to plug the breakout box in backwards.
Or the breakout box has a 100 pin connector on one side and needs to connect to 25 pieces of test equipment on the other side. You probably don’t have 25 different connectors to chose from, nor can you possibly demand custom requirements for every piece of test equipment.
Spacecraft are moving more towards local microcontrollers with local diagnostics so this kind of test equipment for every possible analogue signal is decreasing. In the case of motors, they would more likely be brushless now and you would rely on telemetry from motor drivers during both testing and flight instead of having this type of breakout box.
Connectors in aerospace are also following other industries and becoming more configurable at order time, including adding keys so you can have 10x “the same” connector but keyed so they only plug in one place. But it’s still not practical to demand all test equipment is configured like this.