NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

SE&I Will Help Us Accomplish The Mission

Last month, my column focused on a retraining initiative that will help us retrain our work force to meet the agency's new mission requirements. One of those training areas identified the need for more systems engineering specialists. As NASA progresses in making the Vision for Space Exploration a reality, it is utilizing an essential tool -- Systems Engineering and Integration (SE&I) -- to ensure safe, sustained and affordable human and robotic exploration. Since SE&I is so important, I want to give you an idea of how we are incorporating this approach into our work at Glenn.

Image right: Rick Wiedenmannot, Systems Engineering and Integration Branch, and Dave Nawrocki, Mechanical Design Branch, brief Dr. Whitlow on the complexity of the Glenn-designed Vehicle Motion Simulator. Credit: NASA/Marvin Smith

SE&I is a logical systems approach performed by multidisciplinary teams to engineer and integrate NASA's systems. Implementing SE&I effectively will enhance NASA's core engineering, management and scientific capabilities and processes to ensure safety and mission success, increase performance and reduce costs.

SE&I is embedded in all levels of the agency's Constellation work, and Glenn has involvement in all of these levels. Level 0, the agency, and Level 1, the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, set the program goals. They answer the questions: What do we want to do? What are the products (flight hardware) that we want to produce?

We have supported SE&I at the agency level through participation in the Exploration Systems Architecture Study. We continue our involvement as members of the Lunar Architecture Team to develop products such as top-level requirements and design reference missions (the technical specifications of an exploration mission that the architecture must achieve).

We work closely with the Constellation Program Office, Level II, at Johnson Space Center. This level provides the technical definition of the program. The Constellation Program Office answers the questions: How do we achieve the goals? How do we get there, and what do we do when we get there? At this level, Glenn is responsible for technical engineering to define program standards, specifications and requirements. Our center has SE&I leadership roles in power and communications.

SE&I is a vital part of our Level III project work in the Orion crew exploration vehicle and the Ares I Launch Vehicle. This level works with Level II to develop the system requirements and interface requirements and deploys those through all lower levels of the system. So, ultimately, there is a complete technical definition of requirements, and later, specifications for all parts of the system. They answer the questions: What must each part, component, subsystem and element do? How must they work together? What are their physical characteristics/limitations?

Among the many SE&I tasks being performed for Orion, Glenn is leading the development of the System Requirements Document, which defines what the vehicle designed by the prime contractor must do.

Glenn personnel are performing integrated design analysis for Ares I, including trajectory analysis and mission design support. In addition, we lead several independent verification and validation tasks in support of Ares I, including guidance, navigation and control, control stability, structural sizing, reliability for risk-based design and structural dynamics.

Because the new era of Exploration requires complex vehicles and infrastructure, a myriad of elements must come together to produce a tangible product. NASA will utilize SE&I to identify each of the elements, define and set system requirements and ensure integration throughout the product lines.

SE&I will help us to accomplish the Agency’s mission -- continuing our center’s long tradition of excellence in developing space flight systems.

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