Reducing NPR 7120.5D to Practice: Preparing for a remote site Life-cycle Review

The Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission was the first Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) project initiated under NASA's revised rules for space flight project management, NPR 7120.5D, “NASA Space Flight Program and Project Management Requirements.” 12 NASA selected GRAIL through a competitive Announcement of Opportunity (AO) process and funded its Phase B Preliminary Design effort. The first major milestone was institutional, the JPL Project Mission System Review (PMSR), which proved an excellent tune-up for the end-of-Phase B NASA life-cycle review, the Preliminary Design Review (PDR). Building on JPL experience with the Prometheus and Juno projects, the team successfully organized for and conducted these reviews on an aggressive schedule. The results were summarized in last year's IEEE paper, “Reducing NPR 7120.5D to Practice: Preparing for a Life-cycle Review.” GRAIL successfully passed its KDP-C Confirmation Review and initiated Phase C in March 2009.