The Office of Safety and Mission Assurance’s Workmanship Standards program recently updated NASA-STD-8739.6, Implementation Requirements for NASA Workmanship Standards to

• Align with changes in industry standards
• Expand Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) control requirements
• Clarify training requirements
• Reflect changes in other NASA Policy Directives and NASA Procedural Requirements

Recent updates to NPR 8735.2, Hardware Quality Assurance Program Requirements for Programs and Projects consolidate Office of Safety and Mission Assurance policy into a hierarchy, make life cycle Quality Assurance more obvious without increasing prescription, and present approaches and solutions for a set of mission assurance objectives. 

NASA released two NASA Interim Directives (NIDs) updating the agency’s requirements for robotic and human missions traveling to the Earth’s Moon and human missions traveling to Mars.

NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance released NPR 8621.1D, NASA Procedural Requirements for Mishap and Close Call Reporting, Investigating, and Recordkeeping, effective July 6, 2020. In addition to various administrative changes, the update includes two new chapters focused on commercial launch and aircraft mishaps. 

The Office of Safety and Mission Assurance recently updated NPR 8715.7, Payload Safety Program — formerly Expendable Launch Vehicle (ELV) Payload Safety Program  — to bring the document into commonality with guidelines for NASA Procedural Requirements (NPR) structure and format and to broaden its applicability to any and all payloads.

The Office of Safety and Mission Assurance’s Meteoroid Environment Office (MEO) recently released “A Meteoroid Handbook for Aerospace Engineers and Managers” (NASA/TM-2019-220142) to help educate programs across the agency about the environments their spacecraft could encounter during their missions and, in turn, help programs protect their spacecraft from potentially damaging threats.

The Office of Safety and Mission Assurance is preparing to submit NASA-STD-8739.14, NASA Fastener Procurement, Receiving Inspection, and Storage Practices for NASA Mission Hardware for agencywide review in order to meet the planned May 6, 2020, publication date. 

The U.S. National Space Council announced the update to the U.S. Government (USG) Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices (ODMSP). The announcement took place at the First International Orbital Debris Conference (co-sponsored by NASA) in Sugar Land, Texas.

The Explosives and Pyrotechnics Safety program recently updated its policy regarding the storage and distribution of small arms ammunition.

Managing the oversight of ammunition affects both the Explosives and Pyrotechnics Safety program and center security offices, and requires careful definition of responsibilities and processes to eliminate redundant activities between the two groups.

An update to NASA-STD-8719.12A, Safety Standard for Explosives, Propellants, and Pyrotechnics added a new section to the standard that applies only to model rockets that makes them exempt from general explosives requirements that were unnecessarily prohibitive in this context. As a result, NASA’s outreach programs will have an easier time using model rockets for educational purposes.