NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance released NPR 8621.1D, NASA Procedural Requirements for Mishap and Close Call Reporting, Investigating, and Recordkeeping, effective July 6, 2020. In addition to various administrative changes, the update includes two new chapters focused on commercial launch and aircraft mishaps. 

When asked about his new Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) role, Clifton Arnold joked that it came with many hats — in fact, more hats that he ever expected.

“The position expanded,” explained Arnold. “Pressure Systems included ground and flight pressure systems. With that, Lifting Devices was added, and then we included a special category called Propellants and Pressurants that deals with all propellants and inert gases.

Grant Watson unknowingly spent his entire career preparing for his new role, a role that didn’t even exist until this year. As the director of the newly-formed Institutional Safety Management Division of the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, Watson’s 25 plus years in Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA), as well as his executive role as Langley Research Center’s SMA director, give him the knowledge and experience to succeed.

The Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA) Software Assurance program recently updated NASA-STD-8739.8, NASA Software Assurance and Software Safety Standard — formerly NASA Software Assurance Standard.

The latest issue of the EEE Parts Bulletin covers news from the Electrical, Electronic and Electromechanical (EEE) Parts discipline from October 2019 through March 2020. 

The Human Factors Task Force is hosting a virtual NASA Human Factors Analysis and Classifications System training and certification course, available to NASA personnel interested in learning about the impact of Human Factors across the agency. The three-day certification course will be July 28-30, via Microsoft Teams.

NASA is holding the 11th annual NASA Electronic Parts and Packaging (NEPP) Electronics Technology Workshop, June 15-18. This year’s workshop will be 100% virtual.

“NASA Secure Software Engineering Portal,” a Software Assurance Research Program (SARP) project, intends to develop an online portal to provide user-friendly access to security-related software development knowledge.

“Automating Software Complexity Monitoring and Security Analysis,” a Software Assurance Research Program (SARP) project, intends to identify a set of complexity-related metrics and automatically generate them for use by Software Assurance personnel and developers throughout the entire software development process.

One Software Assurance Research Program (SARP) project, “Toward a Guide for Software Defect Tracking, Modeling, and Analysis,” intends to connect software Reliability growth models to practical software defect tracking.