Event Videos

The Office of Safety and Mission Assurance recently released NPR 8715.24, Planetary Protection Provisions for Robotic Extraterrestrial Missions in September 2021. 

In this webinar, Planetary Protection Officer Nick Benardini, Ph.D., and Deputy Planetary Protection Officer Elaine Seasly, D.Eng., will review the key roles and responsibilities for implementing Planetary Protection requirements and answer participants’ questions. They will also review updates to the Planetary Protection categorization and planning process.  

NPR 8715.24 replaced the now cancelled NPR 8020.12D, Planetary Protection Provisions for Robotic Extraterrestrial Missions. For a high-level overview of the changes and some of the rationale behind them, read “NPR 8715.25 Updates Agency’s Approach to Planetary Protection” prior to the webinar.

NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance recently released a memo updating the handling of expiring Workmanship training credentials, along with a web tool that provides NASA programs and projects recommendations for personnel whose training credentials were impacted by the pandemic.

Alvin Boutte, delegated NASA Workmanship Standards program manager, and Chris Fitzgerald, Quality Assurance engineer for the NASA Workmanship Program, will explain how to properly use this process and answer questions regarding the provided recommendations. If you are responsible for taking, managing or verifying any Workmanship Standards training courses or credentials, this webinar is for you!

In February 2021, the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance’s Workmanship Standards program updated NASA-STD-8739.6 Implementation Requirements for NASA Workmanship Standards.

In this webinar, Alvin Boutte, NASA Workmanship Standards delegated program manager, will review many of the changes in NASA-STD-8739.6B, such as relocation of training requirements from the appendix to the main document, along with changes to training policy and the addition of an Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) control section that provides additional guidance for NASA centers to better meet the requirements of ANSI/ESD S20.20 Quality Management Standard for Electrostatic Discharge.

He will also discuss updates to more recent revisions of industry voluntary consensus standards for both the IPC-J-STD-001 Requirements for Soldered Electrical and Electronic Assemblies and IPC/WHMA-A-620 Requirements and Acceptance for Cable and Wire Harness Assemblies.

Learn more about this updated policy before the webinar by reading "Updates to NASA-STD-8739.6 Reflect Ongoing Changes to Industry Standards and Expand ESD Control Applicability."

As humans extend their quest for knowledge deeper into the solar system and beyond, there will be a need for probes that last much longer than previously planned missions. While historical performance and lessons learned can be leveraged to ensure initial success, ensuring success for 50 years or more is a new territory and presents agency and community challenges.

This longer duration will introduce demands and risks that were not plausible on shorter missions —including technical, personnel, management, and support continuity risks — or forecastable with traditional ground testing or analysis. What is forecastable, is that the current thinking around traditional designs, assurance, planning, operations and testing will need to expand to solve these challenges. 

This webinar will provide a summary of currently known information and considerations in formulating a path forward to support these mission types and gather additional insights from the audience to ensure the agency formulates effective, well-rounded and optimal solutions to these challenges.

The NASA Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA) recently released NPR 8735.2C, NASA’s Hardware Quality Assurance Program Requirements for Programs and Projects. This revised policy entails new Quality Assurance (QA) requirements and processes aligned around the Systems Engineering program and project life cycle model.

Jeannette Plante, OSMA Quality technical fellow, will present key activities, processes and requirements as defined in the revised NPR 8735.2, providing the audience with an awareness and understanding of how to formulate and execute a successful Quality program for NASA’s programs and projects. She will follow the Systems Engineering program and project life cycle model to define activities that begin during a program’s design, manufacturing and production, and operation phases; and activities that occur throughout the program and project development process.

Plante also will share project life cycle review deliverables that demonstrate how to proactively drive use of high-value QA practices.

NASA maintains a high level of technical discipline in documenting and adhering to program requirements. Requirements tailoring offers an opportunity to weigh the benefits of streamlining requirements against the inherent risk involved in such a decision. 

Requirements tailoring is not a one-size-fits-all approach. The degree of tailoring depends, in part, on the complexity of an individual project, mission objectives and organizational responsibilities. Each decision is made within the context of the program and the amount of risk involved. The higher the perceived risk, the more scrutiny applied in the rationale of the decision-making process. 

In this webinar, a panel of experienced Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) practitioners will address the issues and opportunities in applying successful requirements tailoring techniques.

Panelists include 

• Lisa Moore, Senior System Engineer, Johnson Space Center
• John O’Donnell, Manager, Quality Assurance, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Billy Stover, Deputy Chief Safety Officer, Commercial Crew Program, Kennedy Space Center

Listen as Moore shares stories of her personal experience with regard to requirements training. Learn from O’Donnell as he explains the Type II process, which primarily contains risk-class D space flight projects, or other space flight projects that do not get risk classified, and discusses the QA Requirements Tailoring Agreement. Hear Stover’s first-hand account of requirements tailoring as it relates to his experience with the Commercial Crew Program and discover how decision-making differs based on the nature of each mission.

Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) is seeing increased application in the planning and design phase of NASA’s missions.

This webinar will provide an overview of MBSE and its implementation at NASA as Model-Based Mission Assurance (MBMA). Steve Cornford, senior engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will discuss the challenges MBMA faces and Safety and Mission Assurance's (SMA) role in this environment.

In MBSE, a virtual model of the system is created, typically while it is still in the designing and planning phase. The model is used as a singular reference source — a "single point-of-truth" — for system concept, requirements and design, and verification and validation and associated data. By using the MBSE model, SMA personnel will be able to run simulations and tests in real time. In addition to being timelier, Model-Based Mission Assurance (MBMA) promises to be more flexible, quick and cost-effective.

In this Johnson Space Center "Back in the Saddle" event, veteran Apollo 13 astronauts Jim Lovell and Fred Haise, Chief Flight Director Holly Ridings, former Flight Director Milt Windler, and Apollo/Orion engineer Hank Rotter compare lessons learned from Apollo 13 that apply to Artemis missions planned in the coming year. Chief of Safety and Mission Assurance Russ DeLoach moderates.

In this webinar, Dr. Ed Generazio, former Nondestructive Evaluation program manager for NASA's Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, gives his presentation "Electric Potential and Electric Field Imaging With Dynamic Applications and Extensions."

Outreach Forum hosted by the Aircraft Management Division to share information regarding requirements, rules, regulations and planning suggestions for Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS).