Aerospace developed the first Mission Assurance Baseline in 2010 to capture a comprehensive list of mission assurance tasks for space and ground systems. In 2023, following the success of cybersecurity matrices such as MITRE ATT&CK and SPARTA, Aerospace embarked on an effort to re-envision the Mission Assurance Baseline in matrix format, and to make the baseline publicly available to satellite and ground system developers, program managers, and mission integrators.
The Mission Assurance Baseline consists of a framework that covers the lifecycle of satellite development, from program inception to operations. That framework is broken down into various sublevels, which can be accessed by clicking on the expansion tabs, or by choosing the “expand all” button on the homepage. Clicking on a task name will lead you to a list of Level 1 and Level 2 tasks, which represent the mission assurance tasks associated with the framework item.
The full scope of mission assurance is enormous – the MAB has over 4000 tasks in total. Programs wishing to tailor the MAB can do so on the Customize tab. Customized MABs can be exported in a variety of formats for further manipulation. The full Excel version of the entire MAB can be downloaded here.
For detailed descriptions on the development, framework structure, Level 1 & 2 tasks and definitions please review the current Mission Assurance Baseline Aerospace Technical Report.
Mission Assurance Planning: Engineers now have a resource that contains a comprehensive list of mission assurance tasks typically conducted throughout the lifecycle of space and ground engineering efforts. This list can be used to identify and track efforts by subsystem or specialty engineering. It can be tailored extensively to suit any mission and exported into a variety of formats.
Anomaly Tracking and Lessons Learned: Allows engineers and operators to report data to the community, tying anomalies and lessons learned to a common taxonomy. Leverages aggregate reporting in a similar manner to existing cybersecurity reporting. Engineers and operations teams can tag anomalies and lessons learned with one or many elements of the Mission Assurance Baseline, boosting the relevance of the feedback.
Education / Training / Research: Expands the footprint of knowledge to a wider audience – raises the bar on what is considered common knowledge. Mission assurance practitioners can submit their own processes via email to mab@aero.org to crowd source information and further support the community.
Assessments / Contingency Planning: Provides a framework for spacecraft engineers and operators to leverage for determining risk areas and for developing contingency procedures against potential anomalies.
Contribute to MAB: We rely on the community to help us improve the MAB. Here’s how to contribute.