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Launch Vehicle Accident Assessment for Nuclear Payload Missions
July 17, 2003

Launch Vehicle Accident Assessment for Nuclear Payload Missions

This paper presents the new developments within the launch vehicle risk assessment framework in support of future NASA missions that utilize space nuclear power sources. The existing framework is an adaptation of the traditional Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) used in the nuclear industry to accommodate the data made available by the launch vehicle manufacturers, the schedule constraints and the output format required by the Department of Energy (DoE) in the consequence analysis. New features were developed and applied in the analyses of the New Horizons (NH) mission and the Mars Smart Lander (MSL) mission.

M. Yau, M. Motamed and S. Guarro, “Launch Vehicle Accident Assessment for Nuclear Payload Missions”, Proceedings of the AIAA/ICAS International Air and Space Symposium and Exposition, Dayton, OH, July 14-17, 2003

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