Attendees of the Range Commanders Council’s 117th Range Safety Group Technical Interchange Meeting last November discussed the growing relevancy of autonomous flight systems in the Range Flight Safety community, as well as related policy changes needed to accommodate the new interest. In addition, they discussed resource protection, a launch vehicle failure, and upcoming policy and risk criteria changes related to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. The meeting was hosted by the Missile Defense Agency at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, and attended by representatives from government agencies and industries with ties to and interest in the U.S. National Test Ranges.

On Feb. 11, Deputy Chief Safety and Mission Assurance Officer Emeritus for the Commercial Crew Program Paul Kirkpatrick received a NASA Yes-If challenge coin for exemplary leadership over his 44-year career as a safety professional.

Updates to NASA-HDBK-8739.23, Complex Electronics Handbook for Assurance Professionals, went into effect on Feb. 2, 2016. These changes brought the assurance handbook into alignment with NASA-HDBK-4008, Programmable Logic Devices (PLD) Handbook. 

An updated and revised NASA Safety Reporting System (NSRS) course is now available on SATERN.

Not much is known about the Kappa Cygnid meteor shower, and NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office (MEO) is working to rectify that.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office granted NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) program a patent for its Electric Field Quantitative Measurement System and Method. The patent covers both the Electric Field Imaging sensor and the methods developed by Edward Generazio, NDE program manager.

NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) program recently published a Technical Manual, NASA DOEPOD [Design of Experiments for Probability of Detection] NDE Capabilities Data Book.

NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office recently released two Technical Manuals (TMs): NASA Meteoroid Engineering Model Release 2.0 (TM-2015-218214) and Lunar Impact Flash Locations (TM-2015-218213).

NASA-HDBK-8709.24, NASA Safety Culture Handbook is now available. The handbook, which was a collaborative effort from the Safety Culture Working Group, contains information on the NASA Safety Culture Program, the Safety Culture Model, the Safety Culture Survey process, and provides guidance on the development and implementation of Safety Culture at the center level.

The Tri-Agency Working Group — made up of NASA (specifically the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance), the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board — exists so that each organization can learn how the others handle mishaps within their organizations and how they could all work together on an investigation, should the need arise. At a meeting this September, the group expanded to become the Quad-Agency Working Group with the official addition of the U.S. Air Force.