The Safety Culture program is celebrating its 10-year anniversary at NASA. Over the past decade, program members have dedicated their time and energy to providing a platform for the NASA community to voice safety concerns without repercussion, communicating safety issues to agency and center leaders, and developing education to encourage contributions to Safety Culture in the workplace. After years of forming, developing and improving the Safety Culture program at NASA, the group is being honored for its tenacious efforts.

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 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.

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.

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. 

After each of NASA’s major mishaps — Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia — the agency investigated the mishap and applied findings to future flights. As spaceflight became safer with the implementation of the lessons learned, mishap investigations also improved from each experience. With NASA preparing to fly three new crewed space vehicles in the coming years, clear understanding of the Mishap Investigation process with regards to Human Spaceflight and the underlying authorities and legal landscape of these investigations becomes paramount. 

NASA-STD-8719.9, Lifting Standard went into effect Nov. 2, 2018. The update consisted of slight technical changes, new recommended Lifting Device Equipment Manager minimum requirements and editorial cleanup. Because this standard went through a major revision three years ago, updates to this revision were minor.