These days 3-D printing is a fairly well-known concept, but in the design and Quality Assurance worlds, 3-D printing — aka Additive Manufacturing (AM) — is still in its infancy. There aren’t many policies guiding AM efforts at NASA, other government organizations or in industry, but the AM community is working hard to change that.

In late June, Dr. Ed Generazio, Office of Safety and Mission Assurance Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) program manager, received a NASA Distinguished Service Medal for his exemplary work in NDE for the agency.

Johnson Space Center developed the Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Data Integration (EDI) system, which allows seamless search and data correlations, integration and analysis across multiple data sources and assurance systems for the International Space Station (ISS) Program.

NASA-STD-8739.4A, Crimping, Interconnecting Cables, Harnesses, and Wiring was updated and released on June 30, 2016. The revised standard, effective for five years, includes significant technical updates and corrections. This update was one of three recently publish standard updates, which included NASA-STD-8739.1B, Workmanship Standard for Polymeric Application on Electronic Assemblies and NASA-STD-8739.6A, Implementation Requirements for NASA Workmanship Standards.

NASA-STD-8739.1B, Workmanship Standard for Polymeric Application on Electronic Assemblies was updated and released on June 30, 2016. The revised standard, effective for five years, includes significant technical updates and corrections. This update was one of three recently publish standard updates, which included NASA-STD-8739.4A, Crimping, Interconnecting Cables, Harnesses, and Wiring and NASA-STD-8739.6A, Implementation Requirements for NASA Workmanship Standards.

NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance’s Nondestructive Evaluation program is leading a variety of agency initiatives to ensure the successful qualification of Additive Manufacturing products for deployment on future NASA missions.

Over the last seven years, Goddard Space Flight Center has experienced a massive increase in the use of inherited components, including flight-printed wiring assemblies.

An inherited component is one that either already exists or is built-to-print from an existing design. If these parts aren’t designed, manufactured, inspected, tested and delivered acceptably, they pose an elevated risk to missions.

The July 2016 edition of Orbital Debris Quarterly News included an article on Micrometeoroid and Orbital Debris impacts on an International Space Station cover. Continue reading for the full article. 

Recently, a new course, “Expendable Launch Vehicle Payload Safety Requirements” (SMA-HQ-WBT-206), was released to the agency in SATERN. The course focuses on NASA-STD-8719.24, NASA Expendable Launch Vehicle Payload Safety Requirements.

NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office is acquiring a Titan Transtage from the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group , commonly known as “The Boneyard,” at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, to conduct spectrographic inspections to better understand these historic spacecraft.