Tracking Number 2010-04-12 (SOC-01) 


Verifying and Certifying Commercial Crew Spacecraft 


NASA Advisory Council Recommendation: 

NASA should expedite development of a strategy, plan and a team for defining and obtaining 

objective data which would indicate that a commercial vehicle is adequately verified, certified 

and tested to meet requirements. This strategy and plan should be part ofthe solicitation 

package. The plan should identity the analytical and test data, including flight test required, and 

NASA's involvement in the development activity to enable informed participation in reviews to 

ascertain that the requirements have been met. The NAC also suggests that part ofthe strategy 

should be a small technical team(s) with representatives from all critical disciplines, including 

flight crew personnel, to following the development ofthe vehicle and operations development. 

These teams should be limited in size and operate under guidelines defined in lithe plan." These 

team(s) should cover all the bases, and should be staffed with specific named participants. 

NASA Response: 

NASA concurs that a strategy, plan and a team for defining and obtaining objective data which 

would indicate that a commercial vehicle is adequately verified, certified, and tested to meet 

requirements should be developed and expedited. NASA has identified a document architecture 

that would allow a commercial partner (CP) to provide innovative design solutions to meet 

NASA's needs. The Agency recognizes that in order to allow commercial innovation, NASA 

will need to identify firm requirements while giving the CPs the flexibility to leverage best 

commercial practices. NASA is parsing the document architecture into several documents to 

clearly communicate interfaces, requirements, standards, and processes for CPs. The framework 

and implementation process provided through this documentation architecture will allow NASA 

and CPs to ensure that all interfaces, requirements, standards, and processes are met by CPs to 

safely transport NASNNASA-sponsored crewmembers. Furthermore, NASA will ensure that 

commercial missions are held to the same safety standards as Government missions. NASA 

refers to the document architecture as the "1100-series" documents. Document CCT-PLN-II00 

establishes the planned roles and interfaces between the Agency and the CPs and describes the 

necessary elements for achieving certification to transport NASNNASA-sponsored 

crewmembers. It should be noted that NASA intends to enable a diverse portfolio of commercial 

service capabilities. Thus, various launch systems with various levels ofdesign and flight 

heritage are envisioned to potentially fill NASA's needs. NASA has adopted the approach in 

CCT-PLN-ll 00 to allow CPs to propose Certification Plans that address design, build, and 

demonstration tests and flights to ensure that a commercial vehicle could potentially be tested, 

verified, and certified. CCT-DRM-II1O contains sample Design Reference Missions (DRMs) 

that are top-level mission scenarios applicable to potential NASA missions to low-Earth orbit 

(LEO) destinations. CCT-REQ 1130 provides the CPs with the NASA-mandatory ISS crew 

. transportation certification and service requirements, while CCT -STD-1140 describes the 

technical, safety, and crew health and medical processes and specifications as well as the criteria 

which will be used by NASA to evaluate the acceptability ofthe CPs' proposed design processes 

Enclosure 2 
and specifications. CCT -STD-1150 includes the standards intended to establish minimum 

criteria and practices that will be used by NASA to evaluate Human Space Flight operations. 

The entire 11OO-series documents will be made available for industry review and comment to 

ensure that industry has a chance to provide comments to NASA's documents and approach. 

Once the documents are baselined, NASA will make these documents available for industry to 

use during proposal development in support of any NASA commercial crew competition 

activities. NASA plans to use insight and oversight ofthe CPs to ensure its access to analytical 

and test data, including flight tests. NASA's involvement through insight and oversight in the 

development activity will enable informed participation in reviews and throughout the life cycle 

to ensure that the requirements have been met to achieve crew transportation system certification 

for NASA missions. In order to ascertain this, NASA will identify the skill mix/disciplines, 

including flight crew personnel that would be needed to follow the design, development, and 

verification of an integrated end-to-end system and operations. Since NASA is expecting 

multiple CPs, the Agency will need to limit the insight teams to small technical teams that will 

perform the necessary insight with oversight performed by the NASA program. NASA plans to 

have a subset ofthe technical team reside with the CPs to increase communications and 

awareness between NASA and the CPs. This, in turn, will require that the Agency specify 

NASA team members to ensure consistency with the CPs and, internally, within NASA. NASA 

plans to bring additional technical expertise within the Agency, as required, for complex 

technical-issue resolution. This approach will minimize technical risk to the CP and NASA 

while leveraging the large human spaceflight technical expertise within NASA, whenever 

needed.