Parts Selection and Testing for Risk Tolerant Missions

Several recent high level efforts, including guidance from the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) allowing tailoring of Class D mission requirements, NASA's Electronic Parts Program Small Mission Efforts, and the SmallSat Reliability Initiative are enabling innovative and non-traditional approaches to selecting and approving parts for new designs used in risk tolerant missions (typically SmallSats). This project will formalize and implement identified best practices at Goddard Space Flight Center to meet the challenging mission requirements. This achieve efficient testing by tailoring traditional test programs to meet the mission risk profile.

The anticipated outcome of this project is the maturation and infusion of parts selection processes and practices into a product development. The experience, documentation (generalized into a template), and lessons learned will be captured and disseminated for use on upcoming SmallSat missions. Future SmallSats will be able to follow this pathfinding implementation of the parts selection framework driving innovation, better products, and reduced costs and schedules. Additionally, if candidate parts pass testing they can be incorporated in the future designs. The information will be disseminated for reuse in projects with similar risk tolerance.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 5) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.