Mission risk posture assessment for space vehicles

The mission risk posture assessment (RPA) process was developed to characterize and document the accepted space vehicles program's technical baseline (the program's tailored technical baseline). This assessment is intended to provide an effective, consistent way to compare and contrast a reference technical baseline of technical best practices against a program's tailored baseline as a means to measure and communicate the program's accepted technical baseline risk. The RPA provides insight into how a program compares to conventional best practices by identifying deviations from these best practices. The assessment is best performed in the earliest phases of the program to ensure the program's baseline is consistent with the stated risk posture and acquisition strategy of the program. The output from this assessment provides an overall mission risk posture and a systematic top-level view of the program's tailored technical practices across all core processes and supporting disciplines to communicate and inform the customer of accepted deviations that could result in risk to mission success. The RPA can be repeated periodically to document the change history of a program's risk posture over the lifecycle.