For the second straight year, XCELLENCE Awards by the Association for Unmanned Vehicles Systems International (AUVSI) awarded first place in its Operations and Safety Organization category to NASA Langley Research Center’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Operations Office. The award recognizes the office’s overall safety and oversight of all UAS operations at Langley.

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

Computed Tomography (CT) is a powerful radiographic method that provides a versatile inspection technique whenever the primary goal is to quantify volumetric features in three dimensions, but it doesn’t come without its challenges. Measuring its system performance is more complicated than doing so for traditional Radiographic Testing systems.

The NASA Metrology and Calibration Program released a new course in SATERN, “More Than a Sticker: The Importance of Calibrating Measuring and Test Equipment.”

The Office of Safety and Mission Assurance Model-Based Mission Assurance (MBMA) Program has been driving the effort to fully embrace MBMA at NASA. Led by the MBMA Program, a group of Safety and Mission Assurance professionals from across the agency is building the framework to make this effort a reality.

NASA recently updated NASA-STD-8719.14, Process for Limiting Orbital Debris. This update follows the February 2017 revision of the governing policy document NPR 8715.6, NASA Procedural Requirements for Limiting Orbital Debris and Evaluating the Meteoroid and Orbital Debris Environments.

The most recent EEE Parts Bulletin provides information on activities related to Electrical, Electronic and Electromechanical (EEE) parts that occurred at NASA between June and September 2018. This is a special edition on Electrostatic Discharge.

In March, Crumbley stepped into a new role as the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance Software Assurance technical fellow. Crumbley is responsible for establishing the agency-level Software Assurance procedures, policies, training and requirements for NASA. Overall, Crumbley leads Software Assurance policy development and provides research program oversight, technical direction, and support for the agency and its partners.

The NASA Electronic Parts and Packaging Program is bridging gaps between engineering and assurance disciplines using a Model-Based Mission Assurance tool built around NASA-STD-8729.1, NASA Reliability and Maintainability (R&M) Standard for Spaceflight and Support Systems. The tool — the Systems Engineering and Assurance Modeling platform — is a web-based collaborative platform for modeling assurance cases that can be integrated with the models of the system.