by Monica Scorța, ing
03.11.2025
Product Assurance (PA) and Quality Assurance (QA) are processes that aim to ensure compliance with specific applicable requirements and quality standards throughout the lifecycle of a space mission. The requirements can be perceived as the necessities that the persons in charge of the mission commit to fulfil for reaching its success. Key activities in the PA/QA processes include the establishment of clear quality goals (clear milestones to target), creation of processes and procedures to be followed by each team involved in a space mission, and implementation of preventive activities for continuous monitoring and assessment of the mission’s integrity and favourable outcome
Like other standards used across industries (ISO manufacturing, healthcare, information technology, and ANSI - telecommunications, energy, finance), the ones used for the LISA Mission are the widely accepted ones used in the European space-missions framework, the ECSS (The European Cooperation for Space Standardization) standards. They approach thematics like Space Management, Space Engineering, and Space Sustainability, helping the involved teams in guiding themselves in the evolution process of the mission, from the very beginning, where the scene is set, the Conceptual Study, to the very end, the Disposal/Debris Mitigation.
Photo credit: https://ecss.nl/standards/
The ECSS documentation is formed by a series of Standards, Handbooks, and Technical Memoranda that address, in turn, requirements to be applied for each existing context of a space mission, additional information for the application of different standards, and non-normative but useful technical aspects to take into account. From these upper-level documents, there can be obtained the refined of, with the associated requirements, namely the so-called Tailored Requirements. These tailored requirements are a subset of the generic standards found in the ECSS documentation, aiming at addressing specific needs of the mission, in specific contexts, and reaching particular goals of the project.
Photo credit: https://ecss.nl/standards/ecss-tree/
LISA has its own Tailored Requirements that are followed by all the parties involved in the process of this mission’s realization. This user-friendly, single set of standards applied through the PA/QA activities is part of the LISA’s Product Assurance and Quality Assurance team’s activities, of whose members work in the ASPACE-Q group. There are these collective work and split responsibilities across the collaboration to ensure compliance with the ECSS standards and the Tailored Standards for the fulfilment of the mission.
Given the complexity of this endeavour, a planned approach to the necessary tasks to be fulfilled has always been the way to go in the context of space missions and not only.
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