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.

The NPR provides the requirements to implement NASA’s policy to protect the public, NASA workforce, high-value equipment and property, and the environment from potential harm that results from agency activities and operations. It achieves this by including safety as an integral feature of programs, projects, technologies, operations and facilities.

The basis for the policy comes from a combination of Presidential directives, national nuclear laws, international norms and information contained in NPD 8700.1, NASA Policy for Safety and Mission Success.

“The revisions to the policy were made to address both known shortcomings from a prior revision and the evolving nature of NASA’s involvement in acquisition and partnering approaches,” said Don Helton, NFS officer.

With this new update, the NFS team (i.e., the Nuclear Flight Safety Working Group) sought to revisit items that were not addressed in the 2022 NPR revision, as well as opportunities for improvement found during the development of NASA-HDBK-8715.26, Information and Best Practices Related to NASA Nuclear Flight Safety for Space Flights Involving Space Nuclear Systems. They also canvassed members of the Nuclear Flight Safety Strategic Coordination Group and pursued feedback from interagency groups such as the Common Standards Working Group.

Through these updates, the latest version of the NPR

• Is in better alignment with risk-informed, objectives-driven and case-assured strategies.
• Separates Headquarters-level “acquirer” requirements from center/contractor-level “performer” activities and addresses the latter in a new companion NASA Standard (NASA-STD-8719.30).
• Creates more interoperability with the Department of War and Federal Aviation Administration requirements.
• Enables differing partnering and acquisition strategies, as opposed to “built for and operated by NASA” strategies.
• Clarifies the relevance to early life cycle activities and overall operational safety.

The revised policy also has structural and conceptual changes. The latest version of the NPR

• Proceduralizes the need to determine regulatory pathways and NPR applicability.
• Formalizes the overlap with Human Rating, Planetary Protection and other disciplines.
• Acknowledges the use of radiation-generating equipment.
• Formalizes the process for incorporating NFS considerations in early development.
• Brings Nuclear Launch Authorization Plans into the NPR.
• Shifts “doer” activities into the standard.
• Formally inculcates the Categorical Relief Doctrine that is currently handled in a stop-gap memo.

“These changes result is a set of directives that can be more effectively tailored and implemented across a much broader range of use cases,” said Helton.

Questions about the NPR or OSMA’s NFS program can be directed to Helton.