The FAA's Approach to Quality Assurance in the Flight Safety Analysis of Launch and Reentry Vehicles

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration(FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation’s safety mission is to ensure protection of the public, property, and the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States during commercial launch and reentry activities. As part of this mission, the FAA issues licenses to the operators of launch and reentry vehicles who successfully demonstrate compliance with FAA regulations. To meet these regulations, vehicle operators submit an application that contains, among other things, flight safety analyses of their proposed missions. In the process of evaluating these submitted analyses, the FAA often conducts its own independent analyses, using input data from the submitted license application. These analyses are conducted according to approved procedures using industry developed tools. To assist in achieving the highest levels of quality in these independent analyses, the FAA has developed a quality assurance program that consists of multiple levels of review. These reviews rely on the work of multiple teams, as well as additional, independently performed work of support contractors. This paper describes the FAA’s quality assurance process for flight safety analyses. Members of the commercial space industry may find that elements of this process can be easily applied to their own analyses, improving the quality of the material they submit to the FAA in their license applications.