NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA) recently released updates to Cradle, the agency’s Safety and Mission Assurance requirements database, to improve user experience.

In 2014, OSMA deployed Cradle, making all agency policies and requirements accessible and searchable to NDC account holders. It replaced the Safety and Mission Assurance Requirements Tracking System commonly known as SMARTS.

Recent updates make the database more flexible and provide predefined queries and views to see the results. Now, users can create their own queries, views and reports and export the results to Excel. They also can search within a single document or across all documents. OSMA structured the database on NASA’s Architecture Framework schema to enable compatibility with NASA projects using the framework.

OSMA’s goal is to continue to document requirement rationale, explanatory notes and other information within the database, as well as to identify duplication and inconsistencies among requirements. In addition, the office is exploring the use of Cradle to map the flow-down of agency requirements to center requirements.

Accessing Cradle

To access Cradle from anywhere users need an NDC account and a NASA computer. For instructions on requesting an account or using Cradle to search NASA SMA policy and requirements or for help with specific tasks, please visit the SMA Requirements Database website. Comments and suggestions are welcome; please leave feedback or request support. OSMA will use this feedback to continue to make improvements.