The NASA Metrology and Calibration (MetCal) Program released a new course in SATERN, “NASA Metrology and Calibration Program Requirements Overview.”

“This course will help people define metrology and calibration and understand the flow-down of NASA’s Metrology and Calibration Program requirements from NPD 8730.5, NASA Quality Assurance Program Policy and NASA-STD-8739.12, Metrology and Calibration,” said Kenny Mathews, MetCal Program manager. “I believe the course will benefit anyone — managers, engineers, Safety and Mission Assurance personnel — who is part of an organization that uses or calibrates Measuring and Test Equipment in the support of NASA programs, projects or centers.”

The course defines both metrology and calibration, explaining that metrology involves selecting the right equipment by its capability to acquire the desired measurement, while calibration is focused on assuring that the equipment selected complies with its own capability specifications and will continue to do so throughout its use period, until it is calibrated again.

It will cover the flow-down of NASA’s MetCal Program requirements, which are broken down into two areas:   

• The MetCal Program that is a required element of a supplier’s Quality Management System (QMS); NPD 8730.5 requires that centers and their suppliers sustain a QMS that is traceable to AS9100, AS9003 or ISO 9001
• The calibration requirements found in NASA-STD-8739.12, Metrology and Calibration that implement industry technical standards (ANSI/NCSL Z540.1, ANSI/NSCL Z540.3 and ISO/IEC 17025)

Course participants will learn to

• Recognize NASA's MetCal requirements
• Recognize the flow-down of MetCal requirements to NASA programs, projects and centers
• Identify the QMSs that implement processes that satisfy NASA's metrology requirements
• Identify the NASA and industry technical standards that provide NASA's calibration technical requirements
• Identify resources available through the NASA MetCal Program

This new course, which replaces “Metrology and Calibration” (SMA-QE-WBT-248) in the Safety and Mission Assurance Technical Excellence Program curriculum, can be found in SATERN under course number SMA-HQ-WBT-103.