The Importance of Multilateral Safety Requirements for Human Spaceflight

The International Space Station (ISS) Program initially implemented safety requirements in a series of bilateral agreements between NASA and each International Partner. As the program matured and multilateral processes began to be developed, the differences between these bilaterally agreed requirement sets became more significant. Efforts to develop multilateral safety requirements were hampered for many reasons including assessment of national standards used in the bilateral agreements, requirements baselines for existing contracts, and resource limitations to address requirements changes late in the development and operations phases. To avoid similar requirements issues in the future, international safety requirements need to be developed for human spaceflight. This paper will provide the background of the ISS bilateral Safety and Mission Assurance requirements and processes, describe the activities to develop multilateral safety requirements and processes, and give examples of issues that were encountered. Further, the paper will make recommendations regarding the development of international safety requirements for human spaceflight and the safety topics to be addressed.