Independent Engineering Review at JAXA
Okada, Masashi
JAXA

JAXA experienced two serious failures of the H-IIA launch vehicle and the earth observation satellite, ADEOS-II, in year 2003. These failures suggested JAXA to equip capability to identify latent failures as much as possible before flight.

One of the frameworks was Independent Engineering Review Team. JAXA organized two Independent Engineering Review Teams for H-IIA and for following space crafts respectively. Experienced people inside or outside JAXA are constituted for those teams. The framework was expanded to manned space systems such as Japanese Experiment Module, JEM, and H-II Transfer Vehicle, HTV.

Diverse method was applied for each Independent Engineering Review process based on the situation, such as development phase, size of the project, available time for review, etc. Original Independent Engineering Review was rather one shot review. While recent review drifts towards periodic one from earlier phase of development for example.

Recently JAXA is considering establishing standard Independent Engineering Review framework fit for all over JAXA. Key factors for the framework are as follows,

(1) To maintain experienced engineers
(2) To store knowledge and make it easily accessible
(3) Effective participation of the Independent Review Team in on-going project activity

This presentation will provide the history of the Independent Engineering Reviews and future framework of the JAXA�fs standard independent engineering review.