NASA Space Mission Architecture Framework – a stepping stone to a digital engineering future.
NASA has a rich history and tradition of performing challenging missions that test Humanity’s capability limits. These missions have build a culture of strong Program and Project Management, Systems Engineering and Safety and Mission Assurance. As the aerospace industry evolves to incorporate a digital future, NASA must understand its own processes in a manner consistent with inter-operable, machine interpretable data sets that can leverage automated information management and exchange.
The NASA Space Mission Architecture Framework (SMAF) is a step toward a digital engineering future. SMAF has created viewpoints of certain NASA organizational stakeholders that facilitate the development, implementation and operation of Space Missions. These viewpoints serve as a starting point to design an integrated and interoperable engineering culture. This discussion will explain the SMAF goals and objectives, its preliminary structure and some of the dialogue, discussion and challenges associated with adopting SMAF in the NASA culture.