M-FORCE Tiger Team Meets to Modernize Planetary Protection
October 23, 2026
2-minute read
NASA’s new Microbial Forward Contamination Evaluation (M‑FORCE) Tiger Team recently met at the NASA Safety Center in Cleveland, Ohio, to produce a comprehensive assessment of planetary protection’s forward contamination requirements on Mars.
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Category IVa Mars Planetary Protection Primer Now Available
October 22, 2026
1-minute read
NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, in coordination with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has prepared a new Quick‑Start Guide to support mission teams pursuing Mars Category IVa landing missions.
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Revision of NPR 8715.26, Nuclear Flight Safety Now Available
September 14, 2026
2-minute read
The Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA) recently revised NPR 8715.26A, Nuclear Flight Safety. The NASA Procedural Requirement (NPR) defines the roles and responsibilities for managing and overseeing NASA’s Nuclear Flight Safety (NFS) activities.
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NASA Establishes M-FORCE Tiger Team to Shape Mars Planetary Protection Protocols
August 28, 2026
2-minute read
NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA), in partnership with the Science Mission Directorate (SMD), is seeking applicants for a newly established external Tiger Team named Mars Forward Operational Risk and Contamination Evaluation (M‑FORCE).
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ESD Control of Next Generation High Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) Processor: A Wafer Charge Study
August 26, 2026
1-minute read
The High Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) processor is the next-generation space-based microprocessor for future space missions. The HPSC has superior computational capacity and multicore architecture to provide unprecedented flexibility, power management and fault tolerance.
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NASA Employees Can Access ASQ Quality Resources and Professional Development Benefits
July 24, 2026
2-minute read
Quality professionals across NASA can benefit from the agency-wide organizational membership in the American Society for Quality (ASQ). The membership provides employees access to quality resources, professional development opportunities, benchmarking tools, member pricing and connections to the broader quality community.
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Chavez Receives Yes, If Award for Commitment to X-59 Mission Success
June 25, 2026
2-minute read
Nathan Vassberg, NASA’s acting chief of Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA), recently presented Ivan Chavez, structural engineer at Armstrong Flight Research Center, with a “Yes, If” coin in recognition of his commitment to mission success and safety, initiative, and creativity during the X-59 flight test program.
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New Contractor Report, “NASGRO® Software for Fitness-For-Service Assessments of Crack-Like Flaws,” Published
May 28, 2026
1-minute read
The NASA Contractor Report: Fitness-For-Service Assessments of Crack-Like Flaws Using NASGRO® (STRIVES Document ID 20250011200) has been approved and published on the NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS).
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The NASA Software Engineering and Software Assurance Electronic Handbook - A Unified, AI-Ready Resource for Engineering, Assurance, IV&V and Milestone Governance
May 18, 2026
6-minute read
The NASA Software Engineering and Software Assurance Electronic Handbook (SWEHB) is the agency’s authoritative, integrated source for software engineering and assurance requirements, rationale, guidance, lessons learned and objective evidence expectations. Built as a dynamic, wiki‑style site, SWEHB consolidates NPR 7150.2 NASA Software Engineering Requirements and NASA‑STD‑8739.8 Software Assurance and Software Safety Standard into a single, searchable location and preserves historical data across versions—making it straightforward for teams to plan, execute and verify compliance and to leverage generative AI for analysis and planning.
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