Level 1
Spaceflight Foundations
Mission fundamentals, safety culture, the space environment, systems literacy, and baseline competencies for entry into spaceflight work.
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STAR
A proposed evidence-to-entrustment framework
for spaceflight readiness.
The Spaceflight Training and Advanced Readiness Framework proposes a competency-based system for defining, assessing, and recognizing spaceflight knowledge, professional activities, operational skills, and mission readiness. STAR treats competence as a defensible inference from evidence, not as a simple record of course completion or seat time.
A framework for demonstrated capability.
STAR distinguishes training exposure from demonstrated capability. It connects training activities, performance, evidence, competencies, validity review, entrustment, and readiness claims so learners and organizations can trace how readiness is supported.
As commercial launch, satellite constellations, private astronaut programs, and international mission participation expand, STAR is designed to support a common language for readiness: what a person has studied, what they have applied, what they have simulated, what they have operated, and what evidence supports the resulting readiness claim.
The framework aims to improve mission safety, operational consistency, and workforce preparedness by establishing clear competency standards, authentic professional activities, risk-calibrated evidence requirements, and readiness pathways for spaceflight training and competency development.
STAR is in development as a proposed RedMars framework. External recognition, accreditation, regulatory authority, and adoption are not claimed unless they are later verified and approved.
Level 2
Mission Operations
Telemetry, commanding concepts, ground systems, anomaly response, subsystem awareness, and control-room decision discipline.
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Level 3
Vehicle Operations
Vehicle procedures, command authority, anomaly management, integrated spacecraft operations, and human spaceflight systems.
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Level 4
Astronaut Certification
Advanced crew operations, astronaut candidate readiness, flight systems, mission specialist roles, and spacecraft command preparation.
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Academic
For programs connecting foundational academics, CubeSat-style experience, applied projects, and early mission operations evidence.
Engineering
For builders turning subsystem knowledge into design judgment, trade studies, simulations, and technical practice.
Mission Operations
For operators practicing telemetry interpretation, procedures, anomaly response, communication, and control-room discipline.
Astronaut
For future crew candidates building evidence across knowledge, systems, operations, human factors, and role-specific readiness.
Evidence Architecture
From competency to entrustment.
STAR organizes readiness around a traceable chain: competencies become professional activities, activities require defined performance levels, performance generates an evidence portfolio, and qualified review supports entrustment and credential scope. RedMars Portal manages each user's STAR-aligned Evidence Portfolio as part of their account, helping track pathway progress, competency evidence, simulation and practice artifacts, evaluator notes, and readiness milestones inside that framework.
Competency Domain
Define the knowledge, skill, judgment, behavior, and context required for a role or activity.
Professional Activity
Translate broad competencies into bounded, observable work that can be practiced and assessed.
Performance Level
Distinguish knowledge, applied knowledge, demonstrated performance, and operational performance.
Evidence Portfolio
Collect knowledge, applied, practical, simulation, behavioral, team, operational, and longitudinal evidence.
Validity Review
Ask whether scoring, generalization, extrapolation, and decision use support the readiness claim.
Entrustment
Record the level of supervision appropriate for a defined activity, scope, environment, and period of currency.
Assessment
Evidence over attendance.
STAR combines knowledge checks, applied tasks, practical work, simulations, behavioral and team evidence, operational observation, and longitudinal improvement. A score can be useful, but the context around that score is what makes it reviewable.
No single quiz, course, simulation score, or exercise establishes professional competence on its own.
Competence is inferred from converging evidence collected across methods, contexts, evaluators, and time.
Evidence requirements should scale with the risk, complexity, autonomy, novelty, and recoverability of the activity.
Simulation evidence should preserve scenario conditions, decisions, telemetry, assistance, critical errors, and debrief context.
Progression should be traceable to competencies, professional activities, evidence, evaluator review, entrustment level, scope, and recurrence.
FAQ
Clear status. Clear claims.
Is STAR externally accredited?
No. STAR is presented as a developing RedMars framework, and no external recognition, accreditation, or regulatory authority is claimed.
Is STAR connected to the FAA?
No. The FAA comparison is an analogy for the value of shared training standards. STAR is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by the FAA.
How is competence demonstrated?
Through a portfolio of evidence that may include knowledge checks, applied tasks, practical exercises, simulation artifacts, operational scenarios, behavioral observations, team performance, debrief, and longitudinal improvement.
Can organizations review STAR?
Yes. RedMars is seeking subject-matter review, validation, and partnership conversations.