scope:

Purpose

The purpose of this NASA Technical Standard is to establish minimum requirements and provide effective guidance regarding methodologies and best practices for testing systems and hardware to be exposed to dust in dust laden and generating environments. The intent is to facilitate consistency and efficiency in testing space systems, subsystems, or components with operations and missions in dusty environments.

Applicability

This NASA Technical Standard is applicable to any system, subsystem, or component that will be exposed to planetary dust (refer to definition in section 3.2 in this NASA Technical Standard). There are four different environments in which hardware may be exposed to dust: planetary external (PE), planetary pressurized (PP) volumes, in-space pressurized (SP) volumes, and inspace external (SE). In this NASA Technical Standard, the environments are referred to as working dust environments. The word "pressurized" does not necessarily imply habitable. Where applicable, habitable volumes are identified in the text of this NASA Technical Standard.

This NASA Technical Standard allows for broad usage for missions to the Moon, Mars, and small bodies (e.g., asteroids) when working with dust or regolith. However, section 4.2 (Sources of Dust) and section 5.4 (Simulants) have been broken into Lunar, Martian, and Small Bodies sections, with the Martian and Small Bodies sections currently marked as reserved.

The environmental conditions defined in this NASA Technical Standard (sources of dust, particle sizes, system surface, and/or volumetric loading) are based on estimates from current data sets or studies. Future insight into these environments through missions, technology demonstrations, laboratory studies, modeling, or analyses may unveil new definitions, at which time this NASA Technical Standard will be revised. Appendix A provides context for why it is necessary to test and examine the effects of dust on hardware and systems as it relates to the operational environment.

The requirements and guidance in this NASA Technical Standard are intended to be applied whenever dust testing is performed within a program or project, regardless of level of development (i.e., from design to acceptance to qualification). Additionally, new programs may use different equipment and operations (e.g., in situ resource utilization [ISRU] excavation) that produce new sources of dust or different working dust environments. When appropriate, missiondependent accommodations and analyses may be needed. Programs should tailor these values for the specific equipment and operations planned.

This NASA Technical Standard does not provide guidance for mitigation techniques or contamination control, and does not provide suggestions or solutions for operating hardware in dusty environments. As opposed to previously published standards such as ISO 14644-1, which defines clean room practices, this NASA Technical Standard defines so-called "dirty room" environments and directs personnel in the identification of a suitable dust environment for testing. It is left to such personnel to choose an appropriate simulant and define the appropriate test within that environment based on expected dust size range, volume and/or surface loading, particular hardware choice, and other parameters as directed by this NASA Technical Standard.

Use SI units where English units are not specified (e.g., for particle sizes, surface loading, and volumetric loading).

This NASA Technical Standard is approved for use by NASA Headquarters and NASA Centers and Facilities, and applicable technical requirements may be cited in contract, program, and other Agency documents. It may also apply to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (a Federally Funded Research and Development Center [FFRDC]), other contractors, recipients of grants and cooperative agreements, and parties to other agreements only to the extent specified or referenced in applicable contracts, grants, or agreements.

Verifiable requirement statements are designated by the acronym "DTR" (Dust Testing Requirement), numbered, and indicated by the word "shall"; this NASA Technical Standard contains 14 requirements. Explanatory or guidance text is indicated in italics beginning in section 4. To facilitate requirements selection by NASA programs and projects, a Requirements Compliance Matrix is provided in Appendix D.

Tailoring

Tailoring of the requirements in this NASA Technical Standard for application to a specific program or project is acceptable when formally approved by the delegated Technical Authority in accordance with NPR 7120.5, NASA Space Flight Program and Project Management Requirements, and NPR 7120.8, NASA Research and Technology Program and Project Management Requirements, and documented in program or project requirements. Programs/projects are expected to identify necessary hardware, systems, subsystems, and components that will be subject to this NASA Technical Standard and tailor these requirements to their hardware, system, subsystem, or component needs to achieve mission success in an efficient manner. It is unlikely that all requirements and guidelines in this NASA Technical Standard are applicable. Tailoring and customization of the requirements should be consistent with program/project objectives, allowable risk, and constraints. Since this NASA Technical Standard was written to accommodate hardware and systems regardless of size or complexity, the requirements leave considerable latitude for interpretation. The extent of acceptable tailoring depends on several characteristics of the hardware/systems (e.g., type of hardware/system, criticality of the hardware/system, acceptable risk level, complexity, and hardware/system lifetime). Throughout this NASA Technical Standard, a variety of descriptors are used to define the hardware or systems to be tested. This includes hardware, systems, subsystems, components, material, mechanism, etc. In the context of this NASA Technical Standard, hardware and systems refer to the entity that is being exposed to dust.