Mars Sample Return: Do Australians trust NASA?

Mars Sample Return (MSR) represents an important scientific goal in space exploration. Any sample return mission will be extremely challenging from a scientific, economic and technical standpoint. But equally testing, will be communicating with a public that may have a very different perception of the mission. A MSR mission will generate international publicity and it is vital that NASA acknowledge the nature and extent of public concern about the mission risks and, perhaps equally importantly, the public’s confidence in NASA’s ability to prepare for and manage these risks. This study investigated the level of trust in NASA in an Australian population sample, and whether this trust was dependent on demographic variables. Participants completed an online survey that explored their attitudes towards NASA and a MSR mission. The results suggested that people believe NASA will complete the mission successfully but have doubts as to whether NASA will be honest when communicating with the public. The most significant finding to emerge from this study was that confidence in NASA was significantly (p < 0.05) related to the respondent’s level of knowledge regarding the risks and benefits of MSR. These results have important implications for risk management and communication.     

北斗卫星空间信号故障与监测性能指标定义

卫星导航系统指标分配与论证是指导和约束各大系统方案设计及工程实现的重要依据.完好性和连续性是系统服务性能的关键指标,能否满足用户需求主要取决于其中的空间信号故障和监测性能指标.以用户完好性和连续性要求为设计依据,定义了空间信号故障次数、平均故障率、故障漏检率、虚警率等系统指标与完好性、连续性等风险概率之间的转换关系.针对北斗系统及星座构成特点,按照国际民航组织规定的用户完好性和连续性风险概率需求,分析了不同空间信号故障条件对系统完好性监测性能的指标要求.研究结果可为北斗全球系统可靠性指标论证和设计提供依据和参考.     

Towards a scientific understanding of the risk from extreme space weather

Like all natural hazards, space weather exhibits occasional extreme events over timescales of decades to centuries. Historical events provoked much interest, and sometimes alarm, because bright aurora becomes visible at mid-latitudes. However, they had little economic impact because the major technologies of those eras were not sensitive to space weather. This is no longer true. The widespread adoption of advanced technological infrastructures over the past 40 years has created significant sensitivity. So these events now have the potential to disrupt those infrastructures – and thus have profound economic and societal impact. However, like all extreme hazards, such events are rare, so we have limited data on which to build our understanding of the events. This limitation is uniquely serious for space weather since it is a global phenomenon. Many other natural hazards (e.g. flash floods) are highly localised, so statistically significant datasets can be assembled by combining data from independent instances of the hazard recorded over a few decades. Such datasets are the foundation on which reliable risk assessment methodologies are built. But we have a single instance of space weather so we would have to make observations for many centuries in order to build a statistically significant dataset. We show that it is not practicable to assess the risk from extreme events using simple statistical methods. Instead we must exploit our knowledge of solar-terrestrial physics to find other ways to assess these risks. We discuss three alternative approaches: (a) use of proxy data, (b) studies of other solar systems, and (c) use of physics-based modelling. We note that the proxy data approach is already well-established as a technique for assessing the long-term risk from radiation storms, but does not yet provide any means to assess the risk from severe geomagnetic storms. This latter risk is more suited to the other approaches, but significant research is needed to make progress. We need to develop and expand techniques to monitoring key space weather features in other solar systems (stellar flares, radio emissions from planetary aurorae). And to make progress in modelling severe space weather, we need to focus on the physics that controls severe geomagnetic storms, e.g. how can dayside and tail reconnection be modulated to expand the region of open flux to envelop mid-latitudes?     

论高新技术企业管理者的风险观

在强调企业管理者观念对企业经营活动的作用的基础上,本文指出高新技术企业管理者必须树立正确的风险观念,即时刻具有风险意识,系统认识企业风险,积极应对企业风险,建立风险管理组织,具有“冒风险”精神。     

民机项目风险识别方法研究

民机项目风险识别是项目管理者识别风险来源、确定风险发生条件、描述风险特征并评价风险影响的重要过程。民机项目要取得成功需要实现对项目研制生命周期的风险管控,有效风险识别是风险管控中最重要、最前沿的一个环节。通过比较不同风险识别方法的优劣,探讨一套更适用于民机研制的风险识别方法,并对其可行性和可操作性进行阐述。     

内部审计参与企业风险管理探析

随着经济全球化的发展,企业环境变得越来越复杂,所面临的风险也日趋增加,风险管理受到前所未有的重视,对于内部审计参与企业风险管理也成为了一种趋势,通过分析内部审计参与企业风险管理的动因,揭示其必要性,并且得出内部审计参与企业风险管理的具体措施.     

Manned missions to Mars: Minimizing risks of failure

Some major risks-of-failure issues for the future manned missions to Mars are discussed, with an objective to address criteria for making such missions possible, successful, safe and cost-effective. The following astronautical and instrumentation-and-equipment-reliability related aspects of the missions are considered: redundancies and backup strategies; costs; assessed probability of failure as a suitable reliability criterion for the instrumentation (equipment); probabilistic assessment of the likelihood of the mission success and safety. It is concluded that parametric risk modeling is a must for a risk-driven decision-making process.     

空间实验室的风险识别与控制方法

以天宫一号空间实验室风险识别与控制技术需求为牵引,对风险识别与控制方法的分阶段应用提出建议。针对空间实验室的重要风险和组合体特性,提出了的相对风险识别法和降级重构风险控制法,从相对风险的角度对空间实验室重大风险进行识别,在天宫一号无法对组合体实施控制时,用载人飞船接替天宫一号对空间实验室组合体进行控制。规避了风险识别结果波动过大的问题,在不增加设备冗余和其它舱段的前提下降低了系统风险。     

液体推进剂的环境风险分析和管理对策

应用故障树分析了液体推进剂在运输、转注、使用和操作训练过程中存在的各种事故风险，着重分析了氧化剂泄漏的风险因素，并对推进剂常规环境风险影响进行了预测，提出了液体推进剂风险管理的一些对策。     

Comparison of organ dose and dose equivalent for human phantoms of CAM vs. MAX

For the evaluation of organ dose and dose equivalent of astronauts on space shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS) missions, the CAMERA models of CAM (Computerized Anatomical Male) and CAF (Computerized Anatomical Female) of human tissue shielding have been implemented and used in radiation transport model calculations at NASA. One of new human geometry models to meet the “reference person” of International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) is based on detailed Voxel (volumetric and pixel) phantom models denoted for male and female as MAX (Male Adult voXel) and FAX (Female Adult voXel), respectively. We compared the CAM model predictions of organ doses to those of MAX model, since the MAX model represents the male adult body with much higher fidelity than the CAM model currently used at NASA. Directional body-shielding mass was evaluated for over 1500 target points of MAX for specified organs considered to be sensitive to the induction of stochastic effects. Radiation exposures to solar particle event (SPE), trapped protons, and galactic cosmic ray (GCR) were assessed at the specific sites in the MAX phantom by coupling space radiation transport models with the relevant body-shielding mass. The development of multiple-point body-shielding distributions at each organ made it possible to estimate the mean and variance of organ doses at the specific organ. For the estimate of doses to the blood forming organs (BFOs), data on active marrow distributions in adult were used to weight the bone marrow sites over the human body. The discrete number of target points of MAX organs resulted in a reduced organ dose and dose equivalent compared to the results of CAM organs especially for SPE, and should be further investigated. Differences of effective doses between the two approaches were found to be small (<5%) for GCR.