On July 15, Nathan Vassberg stepped into the role of chief safety officer for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. In this role, Vassberg is responsible for upholding Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) technical authority and working with the program to assure that crew safety focus is maintained.

Although NASA has a history of incorporating SMA principles while designing, developing and launching space vehicles, doing so with commercial partners is new territory for the agency.

“The interesting part of this job will be implementing what I call an evolutionary shift in how we implement the SMA function,” said Vassberg. “What we are doing is taking the traditional methodology we use in SMA and adapting it to the new commercial environment.”

Vassberg’s first task is to help the team transition to the next phase of the commercial contracts, a phase known as the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability or CCtCap. During this phase, NASA verifies that the commercial companies’ vehicles are safe and reliable.

“I’m really excited to be going forward with the certification of these vehicles that will get us back on an American vehicle taking us back to the Space Station,” said Vassberg.

As a part of the transition into CCtCap, the team will need to complete and baseline an SMA Program Plan, while also hammering out the details of the Quality Assurance Plan and surveillance model in the next 30-60s days.

The SMA Program Plan and surveillance model will provide approaches to ensure that down the road, NASA has a valid set of data for these commercial vehicles to complete the qualification and flight readiness processes. It all comes down to the safety of the crew that could one day be transported using these commercial vehicles.

“The challenge is trying to achieve enough insight into partner designs and risks to assure the safety of our crew in these commercial vehicles,” said Vassberg.

As part of the plan, the program is working on a definition of shared assurance — that is, where SMA and the Commercial Crew Program share in safety and mission assurance responsibilities.

Also, smaller teams are working to integrate the program’s plans with its parent program, NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Program, to ensure that everyone is in sync at a program-management level.

“We’re going off and building a little bit, and then we come back and make sure we are still in sync at the big-picture level,” explained Vassberg about the team’s workflow process.

Over the coming months, the program will define the responsibilities for NASA’s Certification of Flight Readiness, detail how to achieve the necessary goals and functions, and also work closely with commercial partners to implement the SMA Program Plan.

“The success or failure of that plan is truly dependent on the partnership,” said Vassberg. “I think what’s most important is that we have a team that’s been engaged in laying the groundwork for all this activity, and they are already in place and moving. We are just making sure the team moves forward in achieving these [goals].”

Vassberg spent the last year working with the Commercial Crew Program to establish its Safety Review Board. Prior to that, he spent 13 years as the chairman of the International Space Station (ISS) Safety Review Panel. During his tenure with the Space Station, he reviewed most of the major components flown to the station, including all the robotic systems. He also chaired the safety reviews for both the SpaceX Dragon and the Orbital Science Corporation Cygnus commercial vehicles that have flown to the ISS.

Vassberg has a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the University of Texas.