NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA) made significant updates to NPR 8705.4A, Risk Classification for NASA Payloads, effective April 29. 2021. OSMA updated the policy to reflect changes in risk acceptance and Technical Authority concurrence policies, to formalize and shorten the timeline for the risk classification process, to provide clearer and earlier documentation of the Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) implementation approach, and (most importantly) better align stakeholder and implementer expectations. 

NASA’s Safety and Mission Assurance Reliability and Maintainability team is progressing with its Digital Transformation strategy to create solutions that enable seamless data flow and collaboration across centers. Integrating digital technologies will streamline engineering processes and data acquisition, share data among missions and centers seamlessly, leverage tools and technology across the agency, and ensure mission success through knowledge and influence.

In tune with the agency’s initiative to create solutions that enable seamless data flow and collaboration across centers, NASA is hosting its first virtual Digital Transformation Hackathon, Sept. 11.

When it comes to Reliability and Maintainability (R&M), the public and private sectors’ objectives appear to be aligned. The 2020 theme for the annual R&M Symposium (RAMS) —  a conference focused on the latest technical practices and procedures presented through technical papers and tutorials — was, “R&M in a Model-Based Systems Engineering Environment.”

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 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. 

A new public-private initiative is working to improve Small Satellite (SmallSat) mission confidence. Historically, using CubeSats or SmallSats for certain types of missions have largely been viewed as unviable due to the mission success rate associated with these missions. As the space industry landscape changes — continuous technological advancements; miniaturization of Electrical, Electronic, and Electromechanical Parts and components; and increasing constraints on budget and schedule — both the public and private sector are looking to the small spacecraft platform for a range of missions with expectations of mission success.

Last December, Anthony “Tony” DiVenti stepped into a new role as the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance Reliability and Maintainability (R&M) technical fellow. DiVenti sought this position because of his passion for R&M and his desire to improve tools, methods and training and hopefully remove barriers that may prevent R&M professionals from performing their jobs in the most effective and efficient manner.

The Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA) created a new program dedicated to developing projects focused on moving demonstrations to best practices in the emerging Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) paradigm. The Model-Based Mission Assurance (MBMA) Program will work to facilitate the integration of assurance functions and requirements into the project model. 

“At NASA, we should allow computers to do what computers are good at, so people can do what people are good at.”

This perspective, explained by MBSE Pathfinder Study Co-Lead Jessica Knizhnik, is the main motive behind a Pathfinder study, sponsored by the NASA Engineering and Safety Center, to investigate how Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and Model-Based Engineering (MBE) techniques can be applied by NASA projects.