Telemetry Analysts are hired into positions directly supporting a technical mission office. Analysts supporting a technical mission office analyze signals from various sources, including foreign instrumentation signals (primarily telemetry), radar and other electronic systems.
The word telemetry is derived from Greek roots meaning remote measure. Telemetry is a communication process by which measurements are collected at one point and transmitted to receiving equipment at a different location. The term telemetry commonly refers to wireless data transfer mechanisms (radio waves) but telemetry can also be transferred over other media such as telephone, computer networks, infrared systems, and optical links.
Telemetry is used in many disciplines including weather monitoring, energy monitoring, medicine and healthcare, law enforcement, motor racing, agriculture, and wildlife management among many others including the defense industry.
Telemetry use in the defense industry includes spacecraft monitoring, aircraft development, and weapons system testing. Telemetry is used by manned and unmanned spacecraft for various data transmissions including monitoring the health of astronauts as well as the health and status of the actual spacecraft. Telemetry for weapons testing includes monitoring temperatures, vibrations, accelerations, positions and status of various subsystems. Telemetry is also used for range safety related to flight testing to determine flight termination criteria.
The role of a telemetry analyst is to reverse engineer the data transmitted by various systems to determine the performance characteristics and capabilities of these systems.
Typically hundreds of parameters are transmitted for which the identity and scaling of the parameters are not initially known. In order to derive intelligence from the transmitted telemetry, principles of math, physics, and aerodynamics are employed to identify and scale these parameters to determine system performance. This intelligence is then reported to a range of customers keeping them informed of the latest developments in system capability and performance.