Enclosure_1_Scenario.pdf

NNG16547352R

Enclosure 1

ENCLOSURE 1

RFP NN16547352R

VENUS ENVIRONMENTAL SURVEY

1 PROJECT SUMMARY

MISSION DESCRIPTION

The Venus Environmental Survey (VES) is a Goddard managed interplanetary mission aimed at extending our knowledge of the Venus atmosphere. VES will launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch campaign must occur between April 28 and May 29 2022. Cruise time to

Venus will be 15 months, during which time there will be a series of on-orbit checkouts of the spacecraft subsystems and calibration of the instruments. VES will go into orbit around Venus in August 2024. When the spacecraft is approximately 13 hours away from Venus, the pull of the planet's gravity will gradually increase the spacecraft's velocity relative to the planet, more than doubling it. Once over the north pole of Venus, the spacecraft will begin its orbit insertion burn, braking VES for a required 25% reduction in speed to allow the spacecraft to be captured by the planets gravitational field and achieve the desired elliptical orbit around the planet. The orbit insertion maneuver will take place behind the planet, as viewed from Earth. During this period there will be approximately 30 minutes of the inability to communicate with VES. Once the elliptical orbit is achieved, the instruments will take their measurements during a series of dips into the Venus atmosphere that will occur over the course of the next 12 months.

SCIENCE PAYLOAD

VES will carry three instruments. Instrument A will be provided by one of NASA’s large prime vendors, Vendor A, and is critical to the success of the mission. Its design leverages significant heritage from previous missions flown on the vendor’s standard spacecraft bus.

Instrument B, contributed by an agency partner, Vendor B, will determine global characteristics of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. An MOU was established with Vendor B, where the vendor will work to their own engineering and quality process standards, with GSFC oversight of development limited to status reporting and notification of anomalies and failures.

Instrument C is a demonstration effort provided by the University of Maryland, with a requirement on the design to ensure that problems and failures do not propagate across the spacecraft interface.

SPACECRAFT

The VES spacecraft is being built in-house at Goddard. It utilizes the GSFC standard bus and the reusable software framework and software applications of the Goddard’s Core Flight System

(cFS). It is solar-powered, with a high-gain antenna that can be pointed to Earth for twice-weekly communications sessions.

LAUNCH SERVICES

VES will launch from Cape Canaveral using commercial launch services, so it will not follow the standard NASA ELV payload safety review process.

OPERATIONS

The VES mission operations will be performed out of the Goddard Space Flight Center and in collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who will provide s data-relay telecommunications hardware and operations, navigation support, and Deep Space

Network operations. Science Operations will be managed out of the University of Maryland.

2 SAFETY AND MISSION ASSURANCE REQUIREMENTS AND MILESTONES

The SMAS II contractor shall provide details on the plans for SMA support post Mission

SRR through commissioning (30 days post launch). In addition, the contractor should propose a response to the three provided technical challenges. The contractor must specify key parameters and assumptions made in tailoring the assurance requirements and efforts, identifying key dependencies on the system/subsystem-level activities along with interdependencies between SMA services. The contractor shall also identify the deliverables associated with tailoring of established NASA/GSFC requirements, standards, policies, procedures, and work instructions.

The response should only address the following sections of the SOW:

Section 2 - System Safety Engineering Services o 2.2 Hazard Analysis o 2.3 Integration & Test Support o 2.4 Launch Range Support

Section 6 - Reliability and Risk Assessment Engineering o 6.2 Heritage and Re-use Analysis o 6.3 Reliability Analysis

Section 7 - Mission Software and Ground Systems Assurance o 7.1.3 Performing Software Safety and Software Reliability o 7.2 Ground Systems Assurance

Section 8 - Quality Engineering o 8.2 Process Engineering o 8.3 Quality Inspections o 8.5 Integration and Test Support

For planning purposes, SMA support will begin post Mission SRR and culminate 30 days post launch, in accordance with the following project schedule:

PHASE END-DATE

Phase A 11/30/2015 Phase B 5/30/2017 Phase C 6/3/2019 Phase D 4/28/2022

3 TECHNICAL CHALLENGES

Section 2 of this Scenario described the initial assurance requirements for the Venus

Environmental Survey. In this section, the scenario is expanded to cover technical challenges that may occur during the project lifecycle. SMA methodology and procedural changes may be required to meet the new challenges.

3.1 Descope

During the concept phase, NASA HQ decided to reduce the budget and forced the project to eliminate Instruments A and B, leaving the demonstration instrument. Concerns with the technology readiness of Instrument C have resulted in the decision to defer the Venus mission to a preliminary mission to the moon, where the new instrumentation will be first tested. In addition to the technical impact of these changes, the project has now been reduced the project to a Class D mission. Describe how the mission descope would impact your SMA support, elaborating only on the deltas from your initial approach.

3.2 Instrument Reuse

During the concept phase, the project has decided to forego plans to develop Instrument A and instead will utilize an instrument that was previously built and flight qualified 10 years ago, but never flown. Describe how the proposed trade would impact your SMA support, elaborating only on the deltas from your initial approach.

3.3 Supplier Risk

During fabrication phase of Instrument B several expensive flight boards have been damaged, which will require significant rework. The project is now requesting formal GSFC oversight of the instrument development. After receiving documentation on the associated anomalies, the CSO is concerned with the quality of processes at Vendor B. Describe your approach to evaluating both the vendors quality and engineering practices, and how you would proceed with support for the rebuild of the flight components.