Gateway Program Safety and Mission Assurance Integration - the Future of Safe Deep Space Human Exploration

As a foundational element of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Artemis Campaign, the Gateway is an incrementally built cislunar spacecraft that will serve as a platform for deep space human exploration, science, and technology demonstration. The Gateway will be a unifying catalyst for international partners around the world to establish sustained deep space scientific investigations, lunar surface access, and missions to Mars. As human exploration moves farther away from Earth, spacecraft designs must prioritize and optimize mass and volume allocations, while minimizing human and spacecraft risk. To accomplish this objective, the Gateway Program Safety and Mission Assurance functions develop, implement, and ensure compliance with requirements, in concert with the accurate characterization and transparent communication of residual hazard risks, for integrated safety, reliability and maintainability and quality assurance.

Safety and Mission Assurance was a key contributor during Gateway program pre-formulation and formulation activities where safety and reliability analysis was embedded in the Gateway Systems Engineering and Integration team. During these early program stages, a preliminary Gateway Integrated Hazard Analysis and Preliminary Gateway Probabilistic Risk Assessment assisted in Gateway architectural and operational definition as part of a risk-informed design process. As the deep space architecture has matured, the integrated Safety and Mission Assurance analyses have matured, new safety review processes have been developed, and requirements have been refined to ensure compliance with integrated safety and mission assurance objectives. The Gateway Program is currently concluding the preliminary design review informed milestone, where the primary objectives included:
- Ensured completeness and consistency of the preliminary design, including the meeting of all requirements within appropriate margins and acceptable risk posture.
- Identification of any major issues moving forward to the Critical Design phase.
At this milestone, Safety and Mission Assurance provided numerous products, including Gateway Top Risks and Risk Mitigation Plans, updated integrated hazard analyses, updated probabilistic risk assessment, Crew Survival Analysis Report, and updated Safety and Mission Assurance Requirements and Plans. These products provide a many-faceted perspective on the inherent risk and available mitigations involved in flying the current proposed vehicle design and anticipated stack configurations. In addition, Safety and Mission Assurance identified top technical, process and workforce concerns to be addressed as the program progresses toward the critical design phase.

This paper will detail the evolution of the Gateway Program Safety and Mission Assurance integration functions, provide its current status and lessons learned for future human spaceflight programs. Throughout this paper the key tenets of the Gateway Program Safety and Mission Assurance will be discussed:
- Application of a risk-informed approach to identify and mitigate areas of highest risk.
- Leverage of valuable processes and lessons learned from earlier spaceflight programs.
- Development of Safety and Mission Assurance products to inform design risk trades.
- Utilization of common Safety and Mission Assurance practices to identify safety risks for multiple perspectives: top-down, bottom-up, and across lines of integration.
- Approval of safety hazards at the appropriate level of authority, keeping most deliberation closest to design expertise and elevating risks of greatest concern for program-level consideration.
- Championing of Safety and Mission Assurance processes and forums to foster a pervasive safety culture that is transparent, inclusive, and collaborative between all partners.

These tenets have allowed the Gateway Safety and Mission Assurance function to play a key role in optimized vehicle design evolution, and early identification and mitigation of Gateway program and Artemis mission risk.