Risk-based Safety and Mission Assurance: Approach and Experiences in Practice

Abstract In 2014, in response to a large volume of feedback from industry, the science community, and internal to Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), GSFC’s Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) Directorate began a transition to a risk-based implementation of SMA, departing from its longstanding practice of being primarily driven by a mostly static set of Mission Assurance Requirements. The transition started out with a pilot project involving risk-based acceptance of bare-printed circuit boards that was enormously successful, continued through a complete organizational transformation in 2015, and culminated with the baselining of formal Risk-Based SMA policy in 2016. This article highlights five major examples of successful implementation of Risk-Based SMA that have demonstrated not only substantial savings in project resources, but also the ability to achieve the lowest level of risk in developing and operating inherently risky systems.