Per United Nations resolutions and Presidential Directive 25 [1], the President must approve the launch of space vehicles that carry radioactive material such as the three Radioisotope Thermal Generators (RTG) carried on the Cassini mission. Typically, the President delegates the authority to the Assistant to the President for Sicence and Technology who administers the Executive Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Reference 1 requires the program, which is responsible for developing the space mission, to perform a safety analysis and provide a Final Safety Analysis Report (FSAR). It also requires the formation of an ad-hoc Interagency Nuclear Safety Review Panel (INSRP) to review the program's safety analysis, independently evaluate the unclear safety risk of such space missions, and provide a Safety Evaluation Report (SER) to support the President's launch approval decision.
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