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NASA Procedures and Guidelines |
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This Document is Obsolete and Is No Longer Used.
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| | TOC | Preface | Chapter1 | Chapter2 | Chapter3 | AppendixA | AppendixB | ALL | | |||||
Casualty: An injury requiring overnight hospitalization or worse, including death. For the purpose of casualty modeling, any injury that, due to its severity, qualifies as a Level-3, 4, 5, or 6 injury per the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS), Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine, would be counted as a casualty.
Center Essential Personnel: Government or contractor personnel who perform functions necessary for continued operations at a NASA Center or other site where NASA has control and responsibility. For a specific range operation, the Center essential personnel include mission essential personnel (i.e., mission essential is a subset of Center essential).
Certificate of Authorization: A Certificate of Authorization constitutes relief by the FAA from specific regulations for the period of time specified on the certificate. For approval purposes, the FAA will issue Certificates of Authorization to an organization in preference to an individual, specify the operations that are permitted by the authorization, define the area, and specify altitudes at which they may be conducted.
Certification of Flight Readiness: This document represents a commitment by each element of the program and program managers (NASA and contractor) certifying that their organizations have satisfactorily completed the requirements needed to assure safe flight.
Collective Risk: The total combined risk to all individuals exposed to a particular hazard during a specific period of time or event (a specific phase of flight). Unless otherwise noted, collective risk is the mean number of casualties expected (Ec) during an established period or event (e.g., a launch) due to a given hazard.
Commercial Launch: A service supplied by the private sector that provides the capability of placing a vehicle and any payload into a suborbital trajectory, Earth orbit, or into outer space.
Containment: A range safety technique that precludes hazards (such as vehicle, debris, explosive, or toxic) from reaching the public, the workforce, or property in the event of a vehicle failure or other mishap.
Contingency Management System: A system designed to manage the vehicle throughout the atmospheric flight envelope that provides a controlled response under the full set of circumstances defined by the mission's risk assessment. The system may be comprised of a set of elements within the vehicle, including but not limited to manual control, autonomous control, and recovery capability.
Deviation: A variance that authorizes departure from a particular safety requirement that does not strictly apply or where the intent of the requirement is being met through alternate means that provide an equivalent level of safety.
Emergency Response Planning Guidelines (ERPG) - Level 2: The ERPG - Level 2 is the maximum airborne concentration below which it is believed nearly all individuals could be exposed for up to one hour without experiencing or developing irreversible or other serious health effects or symptoms that could impair an individual's ability to take protective action.
Entry Operation: The sequence of controlled thrust maneuvers or other events that brings a space vehicle or spacecraft from Earth orbit or outer space to Earth. Entry operations do not include suborbital flights.
Expectation of Casualty (Ec): The average number of casualties expected per an event, such as vehicle flight, if a large number of events could be carried out under identical circumstances.
Expendable Launch Vehicle: A vehicle that, once launched, is not reused and typically is not retrieved.
Experimental Aerospace Vehicle: A vehicle intended to be flown in, or launched into, orbital or suborbital flight for the purpose of demonstrating technologies.
Explosive Debris: Solid propellant fragments or other pieces of a launch or entry vehicle or payload that result from breakup of the vehicle during flight and that explode upon impact with the Earth's surface or on their own and cause overpressure.
Flight: Launch or entry of an orbital or suborbital space vehicle/spacecraft or operation of an aeronautical vehicle. For the purposes of this NPR, "flight" does not include on-orbit operations.
Flight Termination System (FTS): A type of range safety system designed, tested, and incorporated into vehicles that provides for the independent and deliberate termination of an errant/erratic vehicle's flight.
FTS Command System: All components needed to send a flight termination command signal to an onboard vehicle flight termination system. An FTS command system starts with flight termination activation switches and ends at each command-transmitting antenna. It includes all intermediate equipment linkages, software, and auxiliary transmitters that ensure a command signal will reach the onboard vehicle flight termination system during flight.
Hazard: A state or condition that could potentially lead to an undesirable consequence (i.e., casualty or property damage).
Individual Risk: The probability of an individual from a certain group (or subgroup) at a specific location suffering a casualty from exposure to a given event during an established period (e.g., a launch). Individual risk is typically stated as a Probability of Casualty (Pc).
Insight: Surveillance mode requiring the monitoring of customer-identified metrics and contracted milestones. Insight is a continuum that can range from low intensity, such as reviewing quarterly reports, to high intensity, such as observance of tasks.
Landing Site: The location on which a vehicle impacts, lands, or is captured.
Laser Clearinghouse: A function within the United States Strategic Command/Space Control Center that maintains the laser facility database, receives laser facility emission requests, determines waiver status, sends approval/denial/restrictions to the laser facilities, and processes accidental illumination information.
Launch: To place a vehicle and any payload from Earth in a suborbital trajectory, in Earth orbit, or in outer space.
Launch Site: The location from which a launch takes place. This includes land, air, or a sea-based position.
Mishap: Any unplanned event or series of events that results in death, injury, occupational illness, or damage to or loss of property.
Mission Essential Personnel: Government or contractor personnel who are directly involved in ensuring the safety and success of the range operations associated with a mission. For the purposes of range safety, mission essential personnel do not include any crew on board the vehicle.
NASA Launch: A launch conducted by or for NASA, where NASA is so substantially involved that it effectively directs or controls the activity. (Also see Commercial Launch.)
National Airspace System: The common network of U.S. airspace controlled by the FAA including air navigation facilities, equipment and services, airports or landing areas, aeronautical charts, information and services, rules, regulations, and procedures, technical information, and manpower and material. Also included are system components shared jointly with the military.
Oversight: Surveillance mode that is in line with the supplier's processes, where the customer retains and exercises the right to concur or nonconcur with the supplier's decisions and any nonconcurrence is resolved before the supplier proceeds. Oversight is a continuum that can range from low intensity, such as customer concurrence in reviews (e.g., PDR, CDR), to high intensity oversight, in which the customer has day-to-day involvement in the supplier's decision making process (e.g., hardware inspections).
Payload: The object(s) within a payload fairing carried or delivered by a vehicle to a desired location or orbit.
Probability of Casualty (Pc): A measure of individual risk. Pc is the probability that an individual at a specific location would be a casualty per an event, such as vehicle flight, if a large number of events could be carried out under identical circumstances. For example, if an individual would be a casualty once per one million identical launches, the Pc for such a launch would be 1≤ 10-6.
Probability of Impact: The probability that one or more pieces of debris from a vehicle will impact a given location or object (e.g., aircraft, ships).
Public: For the purposes of range safety risk management, all people who are not Center Essential Personnel. Public includes visitors and personnel inside and outside NASA-controlled property who are not Center Essential and who may be on land, on waterborne vessels, or in aircraft.
Range: A permanent or temporary area or volume of land, sea, or airspace within or over which orbital, suborbital, or atmospheric vehicles are tested or flown. This includes the operation of launch vehicles from a launch site to the point where orbit is achieved or final landing or impact of suborbital vehicle components. This also includes the entry of space vehicles from the point that the commit to deorbit is initiated to the point of intact vehicle impact or landing or the impact of all associated debris. This includes range operations with aeronautical vehicles from takeoff to landing.
Range Operation: The flight of a launch or entry vehicle or experimental aeronautical vehicle including any payload, at, to, or from a range, launch site, or landing site. Range operations utilize specific infrastructure as well as trained and certified human interfaces to monitor, command, and control the range safety elements associated with programs. Range operations do not include the flight of conventional piloted aircraft unless specific aspects of the operation require range safety involvement to protect the public, workforce, and property. Range operations do not include on orbit operations of vehicles after orbit is achieved or prior to initiation of entry.
Range Operator: A range operator is either a NASA, DoD, commercial, or foreign agency official responsible for providing the ground, sea, air, or space-based assets required to support range operations.
Range Safety: Application of safety policies, principles, and techniques to protect the public, workforce, and property from hazards associated with range operations.
Range Safety Officer (RSO): A person responsible for safety during a range operation. An RSO has the authority to hold or abort the operation, or take a risk mitigation action, which includes terminating the vehicle. RSO is synonymous with the term Mission Flight Control Officer used at some DoD ranges.
Range Safety Organization: An organization that is independent of any vehicle program, oversees the implementation of range safety requirements, and may provide range safety-related services and operational support to vehicle programs.
Range Safety Program: A program implemented to manage risk to the public, workforce, and property during range operations.
Range Safety System(s): A system (including any subsystem) whose performance is factored into the range safety analysis and relied upon during flight to mitigate hazards. These systems include range safety displays, range clearance capability, radar, optic tracking systems, telemetry, tracking display systems (including instantaneous impact predictors), contingency management systems, flight termination systems, and command and control capability for flight termination systems.
Range User: A range user is considered a NASA (or NASA contractor) developed flight test or launch and/or entry vehicle program that conducts range operations on a range.
Recovery System: A system that is installed on a flight test, launch, or entry vehicle that may be activated when the vehicle has malfunctioned and cannot be recovered under its own capacity. For example, the system may deploy a parachute, extend landing gear, or move flight control surfaces in the attempt to reduce the impact of the vehicle with the ground. Recovery systems are intended to preserve the vehicle and do not necessarily address range safety concerns.
Reusable Launch Vehicle: Experimental or operational space launch vehicle that is intended to be reused (at least in part).
Risk: The baseline definition for risk is the combination of (1) the probability (qualitative or quantitative) that a program will experience an undesired event such as cost overrun, schedule slippage, safety mishap, or failure to achieve a needed technological breakthrough; and (2) the consequences, impact, or severity of the undesired event were it to occur. For Range Safety, risk is expressed as casualty expectation, which is a measure that takes into consideration both the probability of occurrence and the consequence of a hazard to a population or installation. Risk is measured in the same units as the consequence, such as number of injuries, fatalities, or dollar loss.
Secure Flight Termination System: An approved U.S. cryptography incorporated into the operations center and vehicle that provides a capability for the secure or authenticated transmissions of a flight termination command or the activation of the FTS.
Space Launch Vehicles: Operational or experimental vehicles that are launched into orbital or suborbital flights for the purpose of carrying payloads to and from space or demonstrating technologies to further access to space. These vehicles are either inhabited or uninhabited (i.e., ELV, Space Shuttle or equivalent, EAV) and may travel at speeds ranging from subsonic to hypersonic.
Surveillance: The continual monitoring and verification of status of an entity and analysis of records to ensure that specified requirements are being met. Note: Surveillance can be performed in an insight, oversight, or a combined mode as determined by NASA using a risk-based decision process.
Tailoring: The process where the authority responsible for a set of range safety requirements (e.g., the Independent Technical Authority for technical requirements) and the range user review each requirement and jointly document whether or not the requirement is applicable and, if it is applicable, whether or not the range user will meet the requirement as written or achieve an equivalent level of safety through an acceptable alternative. Tailoring includes the approval of deviations. Tailoring does not include the approval of waivers, which are addressed by a separate process.
Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle (UAV): A vehicle that is controlled remotely, or that is autonomous and operates at speeds ranging from subsonic to hypersonic in a manner consistent with a "conventional" aircraft. A UAV may be launched from the ground or dropped from other aerial vehicles, subscale flight test vehicles, or lifting bodies. A UAV may also be referred to using a different name such as Unmanned Air Vehicle, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA), Remotely Operated Aircraft (ROA), or Remotely Piloted Vehicle (RPV). Model aircraft (normally vehicles of less than 55 lbs gross weight flown under manual control within unaided visual contact range) are not considered UAVs.
Variance: Documented and approved permission to perform some act or operation contrary to established requirements. Tailoring, deviation, and waiver are types of variance.
Waiver: A variance that authorizes departure from a specific safety requirement where an increase in risk, due to the fact that the requirement is not satisfied, has been documented and accepted by the appropriate authority.
Workforce: Government or contractor personnel who are directly involved in a range operation or who work at a range, launch site, or landing site where a NASA range operation takes place. For the purposes of this NPR, "workforce" does not include any crew on board a vehicle during flight.
| TOC | Preface | Chapter1 | Chapter2 | Chapter3 | AppendixA | AppendixB | ALL | |
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