About NASA’s IV&V Program
Welcome to the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) Facility, home of NASA’s IV&V Program, located in the heart of West Virginia’s technology sector in Fairmont, West Virginia. The facility is named in honor of West Virginia native and NASA “hidden figure” Katherine Johnson. Born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia in 1918, Katherine’s intense curiosity and brilliance with numbers lead her to a distinguished career with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and NASA.
NASA’s IV&V Program was established in 1993 as a direct result of recommendations made by the National Research Council (NRC) and the Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident. The NASA IV&V Program is responsible for providing a systems engineering function that is focused on partnering with missions to improve reliability, find defects earlier, reduce mission development cost, and mitigate operational risk related to the safety- and mission-critical software. The IV&V Program falls administratively under NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) located in Greenbelt, Maryland and operates under functional guidance from the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA).
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