FAIRMONT – The NASA Independent Verification & Validation Program’s Orion Team received an award for their contributions to the Artemis I Mission during a ceremony hosted at the I-79 Technology Park, in Fairmont.
The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Space Flight Awareness (SFA) Award Ceremony is an annual event recognizing employees and teams who have made strides in their role in promoting astronaut safety and mission success. Members of the IV&V Orion Team took home the team award for significant contributions “to improving the quality, reliability, and safety of the Orion Program’s safety and mission critical software in support of the Artemis I Mission.”
Artemis I was an uncrewed lunar flight test and the first in a series of increasingly complex missions that will enable human exploration at the Moon and future missions to Mars.
The IV&V winners were among those honored at a recent ceremony in Fairmont, West Virginia, with IV&V Program Director Wes Deadrick and NASA Astronaut and Scientist Stanley Love among those speaking at the event.
“It’s a treat to be able to come out and shake hands with some of the folks who keep us safe and keep our missions going,” Love said.
According to the SFA Program, the IV&V Orion Team identified and helped resolve nearly 3,000 high-severity issues and risks, working closely with its customers in the Orion Program and others.
According to the agency, on Artemis missions, Orion will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel, and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities.
“NASA’s human spaceflight missions greatly rely on evolving systems and software, and if the safety for these systems fail then the mission fails,” Deadrick said during the ceremony. “In this regard, both for human spaceflight missions and for science missions, the IV&V Program has become indispensable to Goddard and the agency.”
To learn more about the Artemis Program: Artemis – NASA
For more on the SFA Program and Awards, visit: Space Flight Awareness – NASA