Cassini Risk Management During Mission Operations and Data Analysis - Application Lessons Learned

摘要

Risk is defined as the combination of the likelihood of occurrence of an undesired event and the severity of the consequences should that event occur. Risk management is the organized means of risk planning, identification & assessment, decision making and tracking risks. It is a well defined, structured approach required by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to manage risk during the development and operation of its spacecraft flight missions. Cassini is a joint NASA / European Space Agency (ESA) Mission to Saturn. The Cassini Program began the spacecraft and mission design/development in the early nineties and implemented a risk management process during that phase of the mission, as required. While risk management was conducted on Cassini during the development phase of the program, the process did not continue when the mission transitioned into the Mission Operations and Data Analysis (MO&DA) Phase. As a NASA required discipline, risk management was reintroduced to the program after approximately three years of successful mission operations. Following a year of workshops, training, initial risk list development and on-line risk system tailoring, Risk Management was successfully implemented on Cassini. The process has been embraced by the Program and is working well. Risk Management implementation on Cassini however, was not without its share of lessons learned. The Cassini process development presented challenges that if not aggressively addressed, could increase the risk of failure to others who try to introduce a new process during MO&DA. This paper will detail some of the key challenges faced while introducing Risk Management to the mission operations team. It is hoped that the lessons learned during the implementation of the Cassini Risk Management Process will assist others in developing a robust process for use during Mission Operations.