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NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Science Discovery Engine: An Open Science Success Story

NASA is committed to building an inclusive open science community over the next decade and is championing the new Open-Source Science Initiative (OSSI) to foster that community. The OSSI is made up of a number of activities including the development of an empowering cyberinfrastructure to accelerate the time to actionable science. One component of the OSSI cyberinfrastructure is the Science Discovery Engine (SDE). The goal of the SDE is to enable the discovery of data, software and documentation across the five SMD divisions including Astrophysics, Biological and Physical Sciences, Earth Science, Heliophysics and Planetary Science. The SDE increases accessibility to the wealth of NASA’s open science data and information. In this presentation, we will present our collaborative work to date to build the SDE and our vision for empowering open source science in the future.

Kaylin Bugbee↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Biogeochemistry, Planetary Protection, and Astromaterials Curation: A Story of Environmental Microbiology at NASA

The astromaterials curation office at the NASA Johnson Space Center is responsible for curating and allocating all of the extraterrestrial samples collected by NASA. This includes lunar samples, meteorites, cometary material, asteroid samples and individual atoms of the solar wind. Some of these collections are susceptible to biological alteration by terrestrial microbes. I will describe the microbial monitoring of the clean rooms used to store these samples and the ecology we find therein. This research is helping NASA design better cleanrooms for even more sensitive samples like those currently being collected on Mars. I will also discuss our group’s research on improved identification methods, biological alteration of meteorites, and efforts to sample microbes on the outside of the International Space Station.

Aaron B. Regberg↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Eleven Countries, an Integrated Spacecraft: the Story of International Collaboration that Built the Orion Spacecraft and Powered the Success of the Artemis I Mission

The quest to return humans to the Moon in the next step towards humanity's exploration of space is more alive than ever. After a great deal of achievements, failures, and lessons learned, the Artemis I mission set o to the Moon on November 16, 2022, with the goal of testing a new rocket, the Space Launch System, and a new spacecraft, Orion: designed, assembled, and tested across two continents, and 11 countries. Behind this mission, decades of experience with the International Space Station, Autonomous Transfer Vehicle operations, and many other program collaborations built the know-how on how to succeed together in the toughest environment | deep space. The Artemis I mission proved to be an incredible success, meeting 161 total mission objectives, including 21 developed during the flight based on outperforming spacecraft. It was also a case-study in international collaboration, given that ESA, NASA, and industry partners Airbus and Lockheed Martin for the first time had to design, build, test, and fly a fully integrated human-rated spacecraft, with most critical functions dependent and interconnected across U.S. and European systems. The U.S.-built Orion Crew Module and Crew Module Adapter and European-built European Service Module (ESM) shared critical interfaces and commodities, from propulsion, avionics, active/passive thermal, electrical power generation, storage and distribution to the software that managed it all. In this paper, we will describe relevant aspects of the integrated spacecraft design, providing context for the challenges that the team faced in all phases required to get Orion ready to fly, and provide a direct account of how the joint team formed, trained, and supported the operations of the successful Artemis I mission. We will also explore the evolution of the partnerships, given that these allow a multi-national e ort to sustain the program production, share costs, leverage a broader base of engineering expertise, and build more diverse capabilities over the long haul to support the Artemis goals and objectives. Lastly, we will cover critical lessons learned and how the Orion Program has implemented these in preparation of the next Artemis missions to repeat the success of Artemis I. The purpose of this paper is to document knowledge we gained and lessons we learned through the development of an integrated Orion spacecraft, since it is imperative we build on this now, at the dawn of the Artemis Program, an international endeavor to push human space exploration.

Deep Space Exploration↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Webb Space Telescope - An Engineering Marvel Story

This presentation will provide an overview of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and its engineering development process. JWST has succeeded the Hubble Space Telescope in our quest for the first galaxies formed out of the darkness of the early universe. Since its launch in December 2021, JWST has helped us understand how these galaxies evolved over billions of years, how stars and planetary systems form, what exoplanets look like and if they can harbor life. JWST uses a ~6.5-m-diameter primary mirror to collect infrared light, which is sent to four scientific instruments. It operates at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point and has a five-layer sunshield to be able to operate at cryogenic temperatures. JWST is an international effort of NASA and the European and Canadian Space Agencies.

James Webb Space Telescope↗
NASA NTRS2003

Oh, Develop

In a mature view of the subject, career development is not simply four years of college or a week at training, culminating in a diploma or a certificate to hang on an office wall. That's why we wanted to take a broad look at career development in this issue of ASK. Take for example, Dr. Gerald Mulenburg s contribution, Fly on the Wall. When Mulenburg and other members of a knowledge-sharing group at Ames were invited to observe an upcoming project review, Mulenburg thought it would be interesting to learn how another project does its reviews. Note that Mulenburg is no fresh out who's never attended a NASA project review. Not only has he been through a fair share of them as the reviewed, he has also been on the other side of the table as a reviewer. This experienced project manager recognizes that at any stage of a career there is room to grow and develop one's repertoire. Too often people associate career development with textbooks and role classroom training, far removed from project life. But classroom training need not be like this, as you'll find in our Special Feature, The Enterprise Project by Wendy Dolci, which sprung out of an APPL Advanced Project Management class in July 2003 at Ames Research Center. In addition to Dolci, some of her classmates contribute to the story. Mike Sander of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, project manager for the Mars Science Laboratory mission, who provided the assignment on which the story is based, also has a cameo in the story. We think Dolci's story is an inspiring example of what classroom training can be if it's approached imaginatively and made to serve a practical purpose. Another story from Ames, by Frank Larsen, takes a different twist on career development. At the annual Experimental Aircraft Association Fly-in in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Larsen represented Ames at a NASA booth. While there, Larsen met a colleague from Glenn Research Center. Months later on a project with a quick turnaround, he remembered his colleague from Glenn who had equipment that might help Larsen save time and money on his project. Although they had never worked together and they had to unravel a lot of red tape before they could collaborate, they managed a way to get the job done. There are other stories in this issue that deal directly with this theme of career development. Then there are others in which it is less explicit. But if you take the view that career development happens all the time, and is as necessary to your survival as breathing, then you can read almost any story in ASK with your career development in mind. In that case, all the best, and so then-start developing.

Post, Todd↗
NASA NTRS2001

ASK Magazine

Not everyone looks forward to reviews. Dog and pony shows I've heard them called. Exercises in putting together Power Point charts. Other less tasteful descriptions abound, but I won't bother to summarize these. This is a tasteful magazine after all. In this issue, we've assembled a number of articles on the subject of reviews, particularly as they occur in the NASA project world (although we cover the subject from other perspectives too). Veteran NASA Project Manager Marty Davis, in his article Tangled Up in Reviews, writes, "Many people regard reviews as something onerous, but if we can tailor them so that they're not as bad as they have to be, it can be a great benefit to a project manager." Great benefits to the project manager is what you'll find in Marty's story as he describes not only tailoring a single review but the entire lifecycle of reviews in his project. In Jo Gunderson's story, Calling Down the Fire on Yourself, she describes a young NASA Project Manager who does just that because, as he tells her, I needed to know if there was anything that I had overlooked." How he brings fire down on himself at his project review will inspire other young Project Managers, seasoned managers, and anyone else who reads this powerful story. Leave Your Ego at the Door, by Jenny Baer-Reidhart and Ray Morgan, uses reviews to highlight the creative collaboration that existed between NASA and one of its industry partners. The protagonist of this story is a company who took advantage of NASAs expert advice during reviews and accomplished amazing feats as a result. The story also examines how disasters might well have been avoided by two other NASA partners had they been as open-minded as the first company during their reviews. In Roy Malone's story, Standing Offer, a NASA Project Manager describes how he used a crack review team to help him pass a critical certification inspection while he was a Combat Systems Officer in the Navy. Malone invited the reviewers to come back several times so that they would be able to focus in detail on the many areas of the program that would be scrutinized during the certification inspection. These are just a sampling of some of the articles you'll find in this issue of ASK. We believe this issue offers ample evidence that talented Project Managers know how to use reviews to the great benefit of their projects. A talented Project Manager will typically figure out a way to turn any onerous task into a useful learning exercise. These Project Managers demonstrate that the real value of reviews is that they provide a chance to learn something. No dog and pony shows here.

Laufer, Alexander↗
NASA NTRS2003

Small Wins

While it might not seem so radical these days to see the words 'story' and 'business' in the same sentence, that certainly wasn't the case when I set out to put together my first collection of business stories. Procter & Gamble hired me in the early 1990's as a management consultant. I participated in training programs, procedural reviews, and the like-but I wasn't satisfied with these traditional approaches. I sought to inspire significant change in the way that project practitioners approached their work, and I thought I had found the right vehicle: stories. I wanted to collect the stories of some of the most successful project managers and share them with others in the company. First, I found a sponsor with enough vision to support my idea, and then I assembled a team of eight highly successful project managers who were willing to examine the idea of writing stories about their project work. My long-term goal was to collect their stories in a full-length book.

Laufer, Alexander↗