Stennis Space Center’s Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) Directorate combined its safety data from seven separate databases to create a more streamlined collection of data. The center hopes the system, known as the SMA Crystal Ball, will eventually predict future safety incidents based on past data to help Stennis management better allocate center resources. 

NASA and industry are working together to meet the safety, schedule and efficiency demands for current and future space flights, including those to and from the International Space Station.

You may be familiar with some of the well-known meteor showers like the Perseids or Leonids, but have you heard of the gamma Lyrids? If not, you’re not alone — this shower is new to NASA as well.

Cellphones have become ubiquitous, and while their benefits are apparent, the risks are sometimes more hidden.

After experiencing two incidents of cellphone interference with sensitive hardware, Goddard Space Flight Center’s Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) Chief Engineer Jesse Leitner raised the concern to the Goddard SMA Risk Advisory Board as a potential cross-center risk. 

NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance Quality Initiatives Program sponsored a half day workshop on Quality Assurance in Additive Manufacturing (AM) at Aerospace Corporation Headquarters in El Segundo, California. The workshop, held in association with Aerospace’s Manufacturing Problem Prevention Program — or MP3 — and Additive Manufacturing Guidance Development Workshop, focused on the theme of “Quality Strategies for AM.” Speakers at the NASA AM portion included NASA centers, national labs and AM manufacturing industry representatives, as well as industrial risk analysis companies. 

The Meteoroid Environment Office (MEO) selected three new sites, all in Florida, to host All Sky Fireball Network cameras — Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the Robinson Observatory at the University of Central Florida and the Beach Corrosion Facility at NASA Kennedy Space Center. Installation occurred in October.

“What was that bright light in the sky last night?” is a popular question NASA hears from the public and media, and one that the Meteoroid Environment Office, along with its All Sky Fireball Network, does its best to answer, in detail.

One of the most important aspects of Reliability and Maintainability is understanding how things fail. Engineers can only make systems reliable if they understand what makes them unreliable.

Johnson Space Center’s Reliability and Maintainability program is working on a new system that helps engineers and mission managers make better risk-informed decisions.

The Perseid meteor shower, which peaks in August of each year, was twice as active in 2016 compared to other years. The Perseids are always a major shower and move at very high speeds, so monitoring is essential for the safety of NASA’s spacecraft as there is great potential for high-energy impacts. Increases in activity, like that seen this year, add additional mission risks.