The NASA Range Flight Safety Program, with support from the NASA Safety Center (NSC), recently released an update to ”UAS Range Flight Safety” (SMA-AS-WBT-300), which is now available in SATERN. The course provides a fundamental understanding of the roles, responsibilities, and requirements essential to performing NASA Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) operations, as they relate to Range Flight Safety. 

“The updated course offers expanded coverage of Range Safety Officer (RSO) and day-of-flight activities,” said Brenda Wall, Range Flight Safety engineer with Safety and Mission Assurance Support Services IV at Kennedy Space Center. “It also addresses the paths available to NASA to authorize UAS flights in special-use airspace and the National Airspace System, including FAA 14 CFR Part 107 — Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems.”

This five-hour, web-based course incorporates roughly 450 slides, 21 videos and three demonstrated exercises, along with substantial supporting materials to define and discuss the major elements of Range Flight Safety including policy and requirements, flight safety analysis, flight safety systems, and range flight operations for NASA UAS. 

Soon, this revised course will replace the in-person Range Flight Safety Operations training course required for UAS RSO’s per NASA-STD-8719.25.

Removal of the Range Flight Safety Operations course training requirement for UAS RSOs will realize time and cost savings for the government and also eliminate scheduling hurdles due to the Operations course being dependent on the availability of range safety consoles at Wallops Flight Facility.

“We are continuing to redevelop our courses to take advantage of the tools we now have at our disposal for improved virtual learning.”, said Chuck Loftin, NASA Range Flight Safety program manager. “Not only does this approach benefit the agency from funding and manpower efficiency perspectives, it also benefits learners, who will no longer be required to travel.”

Questions about the course can be directed to Loftin or Wall.