Standards Development

Scope

This document defines safety management requirements and safety technical requirements for human rated spacecraft system during the development phase and flight process, and specifies the safety requirements for payloads of human rated spacecraft and the safety requirements for operation, to ensure the safe of crews and human rated spacecraft in orbit.

This document contains the requirements of safety management work and technical work for human rated spacecraft system. The safety management requirements include safety organization, safety programme reviews, safety compliance demonstration, safety training, accident/incident reporting and investigation, safety documentation, safety deviations and waivers. The safety technical requirements include the hazards identification, safety risk analysis and assessment, safety critical functions control, safety design, safety verification, safety assessment and mission operations which are special for human rated spacecraft system.

This document is applicable to safety management and technical work for human rated space vehicle, space station, and items and payloads on board (including cargoes, scientific experiment payloads and so on).

This document establishes the safety requirements for human rated spacecraft which is applicable to the phases of development, launching, operation in orbit (long-term operation in-orbit, extravehicular activity, rendezvous and docking), deorbiting, recovering and landing.

Purpose

Safety is particularly important to space systems, especially for the human rated spaceflight. It needs to ensure not only the safe operation of human rated spacecraft in orbit, but also the well-being of astronauts. Safety policy and safety controls of human rated spacecraft are stricter than satellites or other space systems. The safety considerations involving in-orbit safety, safe certification of products in human rated space vehicles and space station, and the safety of human rated spaceflight missions (such as rendezvous and docking, extravehicular activities…) are needed, so safety assurance programme and safety design in human rated spaceflight are more complicated. Therefore, establishing scientific and reasonable safety requirements and implementing effective safety management and technical work are key elements to ensure the safety of human life and mission success.

This proposal summarizes the engineering practices and successful experiences from safety works of human rated space program. This proposal establishes specific and systematic safety requirements for development and flight missions to ensure the safety of mission operations and the crews. Especially, the contents of hazards identification, safety critical items and safety design in this proposal will improve the capability of safety assurance and product assurance for development suppliers of human rated spacecraft. And this proposal will provide a common and systematic method to assurance the safety of crews and human rated spacecraft in the whole fight and mission processes.

This proposal standardizes the safety management and technical work for human rated spacecraft system, which will improve the international co-operation in human rated space flight. First, this proposal provides uniform requirements of safety management and safety engineering works, which are the baseline for developing safety plan and product assurance requirements of human rated spacecraft, that will help to agree on among the all parties in the cooperation. Second, this proposal establishes safety requirements for all the payloads installed on the human rated spacecraft, which will help to improve the cooperation of space scientific experiments in orbit.

This proposal is also a further refinement and support for product assurance requirements and improves product assurance management for human rated space program.In recent years, human flight missions are more and more frequent. There were a total of 16 human flights in 2023 and 14 human flights in 2024. Meanwhile, space travels are becoming hot, more and more commercial space companies launched the plan or product of space travels, such as Space X, Blue Origin. In 2024, there were 5 manned suborbital flights.

And to be the safe is the precondition to the successful implement of human flight missions and space travels. The content of this standard including safety management, safety analysis, safety design and verification, mission operations safety, will direct to implementation of safety works for human flight, and will provide safe assurance for countries undertaking human flights. International co-operations in human flight are very intensive. ISS development and services are concerning many countries. After China space station construction has completed, we have cooperated with many countries, such as Italy and France, in domain of space science experiments and payloads carrying on. This standard will help to unify the safety requirements in the co-operations and specify the safety assurance works, which will improve the efficiency and reduce safety risks.