AEROSPACE REPORT NUMBER: TOR-2013-00294, KEY CONSIDERATIONS FOR MISSION SUCCESS FOR CLASS C/D MISSION (03-JUN-2013)

AEROSPACE REPORT NUMBER: TOR-2013-00294, KEY CONSIDERATIONS FOR MISSION SUCCESS FOR CLASS C/D MISSION (03-JUN-2013)., The “Key Considerations for Mission Success for Class C/D Missions- Leading with Class D” document is a team product from the 2012-2013 Mission Assurance Improvement Workshop (MAIW) program. The goal of the team, which consisted of government and industry partners, was to survey current civil and national security space (NSS) efforts with an objective of redefining Mission Class C&D profiles with industry participation. Current acquisition mission class profiles for Class C include embedded requirements that are beyond the scope of a Class C moderate risk tolerance and exhibit significant variability between government acquisition agencies. Current Class D higher risk profile is primarily viewed as an unbounded experiment development with very few considerations or detailed requirements for mission success but with the customer expectation that the product must perform the mission. The MAIW team created a survey to review negotiated baselines for current Class C and Class D mission planning and execution. The foundation of the effort was based on the disciplined application of program management, systems engineering, and mission assurance practices for achieving mission success verses a top down requirement tailoring approach offered in a previous MAIW publication. The team leveraged the 2011 MAIW product, “Mission Assurance Guidelines for A-D Mission Risk Classes,” that defined characteristic profiles for mission assurance processes for a given space vehicle mission risk classes (A, B, C, or D)[1]. Additional references provided detail on the mission success technical practices, and additional descriptions and attributes of Class A, B, C, and D missions to include recently published guidance from NASA Goddard [2]–[8]. The presentation at the MAIW plenary session held in Boulder, Colorado on 1 May 2013, represented the final team product. The presentation included details of the survey findings that included best practices and common characteristics and considerations for mission Class C and D mission success risk management strategies with a focus on Class D attributes. The briefing is included in this document with notes pages. The appendix material includes the set of survey questions (Appendix 1), results from the survey (Appendix 2), and some additional descriptions and differences between the mission classes (Appendix 3).