Engineering topics
Groen, Frank
Publications and source records attributed to Groen, Frank.
A Framework for Reliability and Safety Analysis of Complex Space Missions
Long duration and complex mission scenarios are characteristics of NASA's human exploration of Mars, and will provide unprecedented challenges. Systems reliability and safety will become increasingly demanding and management of uncertainty will be increasingly important. NASA's current pioneering strategy recognizes and relies upon assurance of crew and asset safety. In this regard, flexibility to develop and innovate in the emergence of new design environments and methodologies, encompassing modeling of complex systems, is essential to meet the challenges.
NASA Office of Safety and Mission Assurance
No abstract available
Acceptance of Safety and Mission Success Risks
NASA has developed an objectives based hierarchy for guiding Reliability and Maintainability (RM) activities. This presentation overviews the hierarchy and proposes to the international trilateral partners to formulate a task force to consider the elements of the NASA RM framework, as captured in the hierarchy of RM considerations, to identify commonalities and differences in the way RM is addressed by the flight projects among the partners.
NASA Keynote at the 2015 Trilateral SMA Conference, Frascati, Italy
The purpose of this presentation is to illustrate some new directions within NASA's safety and mission function in response to changes in missions, technology, and practices. The presentation lists last year's highlights from NASA's human and robotic spaceflight missions, and discusses anticipated highlights for the coming year taken from existing Agency presentations. It will highlight changes to NASA's mission and the way NASA does business, as described in the 2014 strategic plan. It will then discuss how these changes pose challenges to trusted SMA practices, and provide some examples of initiatives NASA is taking action to address these challenges.
Spaceflight Reliability: An Objectives-Based Strategy
In defining the direction for a new Reliability and Maintainability standard, OSMA has extracted the essential objectives that our programs need, to undertake a reliable mission. These objectives have been structured to lead mission planning through construction of an objective hierarchy, which defines the critical approaches for achieving high reliability and maintainability (R M). Creating a hierarchy, as a basis for assurance implementation, is a proven approach; yet, it holds the opportunity to enable new directions, as NASA moves forward in tackling the challenges of space exploration.
Alert Exchange Process Protocol
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States of America (NASA), and the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), acknowledging that NASA, ESA and JAXA have a mutual interest in exchanging Alerts and Alert Status Lists to enhance the information base for each system participant while fortifying the general level of cooperation between the policy agreement subscribers, and each Party will exchange Alert listings on regular basis and detailed Alert information on a need to know basis to the extent permitted by law.
Proposal for a Comparison of Reliability and Maintainability Activities Across ESA, JAXA, and NASA
NASA has developed an objectives based hierarchy for guiding Reliability and Maintainability activities. This presentation overviews the hierarchy and proposes to the international trilateral partners to formulate a task force to consider the elements of the NASA RM framework, as captured in the hierarchy of RM considerations, to identify commonalities and differences in the way reliability and maintainability is addressed by the flight projects among the partners.
A Vision for Spaceflight Reliability: NASA's Objectives Based Strategy
In defining the direction for a new Reliability and Maintainability standard, OSMA has extracted the essential objectives that our programs need, to undertake a reliable mission. These objectives have been structured to lead mission planning through construction of an objective hierarchy, which defines the critical approaches for achieving high reliability and maintainability (R M). Creating a hierarchy, as a basis for assurance implementation, is a proven approach; yet, it holds the opportunity to enable new directions, as NASA moves forward in tackling the challenges of space exploration.
The Evolution of System Safety at NASA
The NASA system safety framework is in the process of change, motivated by the desire to promote an objectives-driven approach to system safety that explicitly focuses system safety efforts on system-level safety performance, and serves to unify, in a purposeful manner, safety-related activities that otherwise might be done in a way that results in gaps, redundancies, or unnecessary work. An objectives-driven approach to system safety affords more flexibility to determine, on a system-specific basis, the means by which adequate safety is achieved and verified. Such flexibility and efficiency is becoming increasingly important in the face of evolving engineering modalities and acquisition models, where, for example, NASA will increasingly rely on commercial providers for transportation services to low-earth orbit. A key element of this objectives-driven approach is the use of the risk-informed safety case (RISC): a structured argument, supported by a body of evidence, that provides a compelling, comprehensible and valid case that a system is or will be adequately safe for a given application in a given environment. The RISC addresses each of the objectives defined for the system, providing a rational basis for making informed risk acceptance decisions at relevant decision points in the system life cycle.
Fault Management in an Objectives-Based/Risk-Informed View of Safety and Mission Success
Theme of this talk: (1) Net-benefit of activities and decisions derives from objectives (and their priority) -- similarly: need for integration, value of technology/capability. (2) Risk is a lack of confidence that objectives will be met. (2a) Risk-informed decision making requires objectives. (3) Consideration of objectives is central to recent guidance.
NASA Accident Precursor Analysis Handbook, Version 1.0
Catastrophic accidents are usually preceded by precursory events that, although observable, are not recognized as harbingers of a tragedy until after the fact. In the nuclear industry, the Three Mile Island accident was preceded by at least two events portending the potential for severe consequences from an underappreciated causal mechanism. Anomalies whose failure mechanisms were integral to the losses of Space Transportation Systems (STS) Challenger and Columbia had been occurring within the STS fleet prior to those accidents. Both the Rogers Commission Report and the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report found that processes in place at the time did not respond to the prior anomalies in a way that shed light on their true risk implications. This includes the concern that, in the words of the NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), "no process addresses the need to update a hazard analysis when anomalies occur" At a broader level, the ASAP noted in 2007 that NASA "could better gauge the likelihood of losses by developing leading indicators, rather than continue to depend on lagging indicators". These observations suggest a need to revalidate prior assumptions and conclusions of existing safety (and reliability) analyses, as well as to consider the potential for previously unrecognized accident scenarios, when unexpected or otherwise undesired behaviors of the system are observed. This need is also discussed in NASA's system safety handbook, which advocates a view of safety assurance as driving a program to take steps that are necessary to establish and maintain a valid and credible argument for the safety of its missions. It is the premise of this handbook that making cases for safety more experience-based allows NASA to be better informed about the safety performance of its systems, and will ultimately help it to manage safety in a more effective manner. The APA process described in this handbook provides a systematic means of analyzing candidate accident precursors by evaluating anomaly occurrences for their system safety implications and, through both analytical and deliberative methods used to project to other circumstances, identifying those that portend more serious consequences to come if effective corrective action is not taken. APA builds upon existing safety analysis processes currently in practice within NASA, leveraging their results to provide an improved understanding of overall system risk. As such, APA represents an important dimension of safety evaluation; as operational experience is acquired, precursor information is generated such that it can be fed back into system safety analyses to risk-inform safety improvements. Importantly, APA utilizes anomaly data to predict risk whereas standard reliability and PRA approaches utilize failure data which often is limited and rare.
Status of Commercial Programs at NASA
NASA's strategy is two-fold: (1) Use Space Act Agreements to support the development of commercial crew transportation capabilities. (2) Use FAR-based contracts for the certification of commercially developed capabilities and for the procurement of crew transportation services to and from the ISS to meet NASA requirements. Focus is on reducing the risk and uncertainties of the development environment and on the incentives provided through competition by separating the design and early development content from the longer-term CTS Certification activities. CCP expects to develop, demonstrate, and certify U.S. commercial crew space transportation capabilities that meet ISS crew transportation needs by the end of FY 2017.
NASA's Accident Precursor Analysis Process and the International Space Station
This viewgraph presentation reviews the implementation of Accident Precursor Analysis (APA), as well as the evaluation of In-Flight Investigations (IFI) and Problem Reporting and Corrective Action (PRACA) data for the identification of unrecognized accident potentials on the International Space Station.
NASA Human-Rating Requirements
NASA's Procedural Requirements 87052B defines the Human-Rating Certification process and related technical requirements for human spaceflight programs developed by and for NASA. The document specifies Agency-level responsibilities related to the certification, processes to be established by the program, and technical requirements.
Precursor Analysis for Flight- and Ground-Based Anomaly Risk Significance Determination
This slide presentation reviews the precursor analysis for flight and ground based anomaly risk significance. It includes information on accident precursor analysis, real models vs. models, and probabilistic analysis.