Following several months of collaboration, the NASA Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) roadmap planning and risk classification document NPR 8705.4B Risk Classification for NASA Payloads is being formally released to the agency. This revision, which replaces NPR 8705.4A, provides center, program and project SMA activity planners (including Reliability) with a one-stop authoritative SMA planning source. 

NPR 8705.4B complements NPR 7120.5 NASA Space Flight Program and Project Management Requirements and provides guidance for uncrewed spaceflight missions, including a framework for establishing applicable SMA discipline areas, corresponding SMA discipline objectives and accepted STDs or approaches via the Assurance Implementation Matrix (AIM) and SMA Plan(s) commensurate with a mission’s risk posture and corresponding risk class expectations.

Improvements made from the NPR 8705.4A version include:

• Formally introduces SMA discipline objectives and associated risk class expectations in alignment with NPD 8700.1 NASA Policy for Safety and Mission Success, further moving SMA toward an objectives-driven versus a prescriptive, rule-based planning structure for programmatic SMA activities (e.g., Reliability and Maintainability, Quality Engineering, Software Assurance, etc.).
• Adds Payload Safety, Range Safety, Orbital Debris Mitigation, Planetary Protection and Nuclear Flight Safety to Appendix D, addressing Institutional Safety objectives and requirements in addition to programmatic SMA activities.
• Migrates requirements for SMA plan development to NPR 8705.4B from deleted sections of NPR 8715.3 (previously titled General Safety Program Requirements), which is now labeled as Requesting Relief from Agency Mission Assurance Requirements.
• Provides language/examples clarifying applicability and implementations associated with waivers/deviations and the holistic nature of risk classification.
• Provides several reference, definition and acronym updates.

Plans for a new NPR 8705.4C revision, or another policy document, are already in formulation to continue the evolution and maturation of NASA's/OSMA's objectives-driven, risk-informed and case-assured framework.