Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA Source for Project Management and Engineering Excellence | APPEL Fall | 2012

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Inside

Learning from the 

nuStar Launch DeLay

ProbLem SoLving

on the fLy

changing the cuLture 

at naSa DryDen
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to read ASK online.

drfofta SlilB/ASA N:tide CrothoP

ON THE COVER

Liz Rampe, a planetary geologist and postdoctoral researcher, pilots the Multi-Mission 

Space Exploration Vehicle (MMSEV) down to asteroids spinning at different rates as 

part of the 2012 Research and Technology Studies (RATS) at Johnson Space Center. 

One of the RATS team’s goals during this testing is to successfully navigate to an 

asteroid that may be moving slowly or spinning quickly and maintain a set distance 

from it with the MMSEV—a challenging piloting feat. Another part of mission testing 

involves astronauts collecting rock samples from an asteroid during a spacewalk. 

These tests help scientists and engineers design, build, and operate better equipment 

and establish operational requirements for future human-exploration missions. 
Contents

30

Departments

3

In This Issue 

By Don Cohen

4

From the Academy Director

Knowledge and the Practitioner’s 

Mind-Set

By eD hoffman

54

The Knowledge Notebook

Where Is the Knowledge in NASA?

By LaurenCe Prusak

56

ASK Interactive 

InsIghts

11

Changing the Project Execution 

Culture at NASA Dryden

By Thomas J. horn Leaders at Dryden learn 

how to overcome resistance to change.

21

Interview with Lynn Cline

By Don Cohen NASA’s lead negotiator for 

Russian space station participation says 

trust and shared vision made the four-year 

process possible.

27

Beyond the ISS

By L. CLine, P. finareLLi, G. GiBBs, anD i. Pryke

A group of space station agreement 

negotiators reflect on what they have learned.

35

From Masters with Masters: 

Jack Boyd and Hans Mark

Two NASA veterans discuss leadership, risk, 

and the agency’s vision for the future.

45

Building the Goddard Career-Path Tool 

By DaviD WiLheLm, nanCy LinDsey, maria 

so, niChoLe Pinkney, anD nanCy raCkLey 

Devising a map to guide career choices 

at Goddard was a collaborative effort.

51 

Getting the Most from Your Mentor 

By riCharD mcDermoTT Advice on how 

both parties can benefit from a mentoring 

relationship.

5 11

To Our Subscribers 

Thank you for your response regarding your subscription to 

ASK Magazine. Our records have been updated. If you are still 

receiving the magazine and do not wish to, you may let us know 

at ASKMagazine@inuteqllc.com.

ASK MAGAZINE | 1
Issue no. 48

Staff

acaDemy DIrector anD publIsher

Dr. Edward Hoffman

ehoffman@nasa.gov

eDItor-In-chIef

Laurence Prusak

larryprusak@gmail.com

managIng eDItor

Don Cohen

doncohen@rcn.com

eDItor

Kerry Ellis

kerry.ellis@inuteqllc.com

contrIbutIng eDItors

Matt Kohut

mattkohut@infactcommunications.com

Haley Stephenson

haley.stephenson@valador.com

senIor KnowleDge sharIng 

consultant

Jon Boyle

jon.boyle@inuteqllc.com

KnowleDge sharIng analysts

Ben Bruneau

ben.bruneau@inuteqllc.com

Ramien Pierre

ramien.pierre@inuteqllc.com

acaDemy program manager

Yvonne Massaquoi

yvonne.massaquoi@inuteqllc.com

DesIgn

Hirshorn Zuckerman Design Group, Inc.

www.hzdg.com

prIntIng specIalIst

Tun Hla

tun.t.hla@nasa.gov

The Academy of Program/Project and Engineering Leadership (APPEL) and ASK 

Magazine help NASA managers and project teams accomplish today’s missions 

and meet tomorrow’s challenges by sponsoring knowledge-sharing events and 

publications, providing performance enhancement services and tools, supporting 

career development programs, and creating opportunities for project management 

and engineering collaboration with universities, professional associations, industry 

partners, and other government agencies.

ASK Magazine grew out of the Academy and its Knowledge Sharing Initiative, 

designed for program/project managers and engineers to share expertise and lessons 

learned with fellow practitioners across the Agency. Reflecting the Academy’s 

responsibility for project management and engineering development and the 

challenges of NASA’s new mission, ASK includes articles about meeting the technical 

and managerial demands of complex projects, as well as insights into organizational 

knowledge, learning, collaboration, performance measurement and evaluation, and 

scheduling. We at APPEL Knowledge Sharing believe that stories recounting the reallife experiences of practitioners communicate important practical wisdom and best 

practices that readers can apply to their own projects and environments. By telling 

their stories, NASA managers, scientists, and engineers share valuable experience-based 

knowledge and foster a community of reflective practitioners. The stories that appear 

in ASK are written by the “best of the best” project managers and engineers, primarily 

from NASA, but also from other government agencies, academia, and industry. Who 

better than a project manager or engineer to help a colleague address a critical issue on 

a project? Big projects, small projects—they’re all here in ASK.

You can help ASK provide the stories you need and want by letting our editors know 

what you think about what you read here and by sharing your own stories. To 

submit stories or ask questions about editorial policy, contact Don Cohen, Managing 

Editor, doncohen@rcn.com, 781-860-5270.

For inquiries about Academy Knowledge Sharing programs and products, please contact 

Yvonne Massaquoi, InuTeq LLC, 6303 Ivy Lane, Suite 130, Greenbelt, MD 20770; 

yvonne.massaquoi@inuteqllc.com; 301-837-9127.

2 | ASK MAGAZINE
ASK Magazine is one small part of NASA’s varied and 

extensive efforts to share the knowledge needed to carry 

out the agency’s projects and programs successfully. We 

hope that the stories and reflections published here will 

help readers think about their own work in new ways and 

will inspire them to learn—by seeking out our authors, by 

trying something new, by discussing what they read with 

their peers. Recognizing that knowledge is obtained in many 

ways and that reading a magazine is not at the top of the list, 

we think of ASK more as a spur to knowledge creation and 

acquisition than as a “container” of knowledge.

Ed Hoffman’s comments on his role as Chief Knowledge 

Officer (“From the Academy Director: Knowledge and the 

Practitioner’s Mind-Set”) give a sense of just how diverse 

NASA’s knowledge is, both in terms of what people know 

and how they learn it. He recognizes that his job is to 

champion and facilitate the agency’s wealth of successful 

practices, not impose one limited idea of how to “do” 

knowledge. Laurence Prusak also discusses the complexity 

of organizational knowledge, suggesting, in “The Knowledge 

Notebook,” that it exists in a range of forms and places: in 

individuals, in groups, in practices, processes, and routines.

Many of the articles here speak to the variety of what 

people need to know at NASA and how they get that 

knowledge. In “Getting the Most from Your Mentor,” Richard 

McDermott recommends mentoring relationships as sources 

of technical, managerial, and career knowledge. The authors 

of “Building the Goddard Career-Path Tool” describe an 

online map that supports knowledge about how to manage 

your career. The International Project Management course 

Angela Marsh attended (“Understanding International 

Project Management”) combines book learning, discussion, 

and shared activities to give participants a sense of the 

complexities of working across cultures.

Barbara Fillip’s “Project Knowledge in the Moment” 

explains Goddard’s powerful Pause and Learn sessions, 

which use reflection and conversation in the course of 

projects to identify and share important lessons. Pause 

and Learn is an important extension of learning by doing—

reflecting on what you’ve done being an essential step in 

learning from experience.

Without question, learning how to do something by 

doing it (especially with knowledgeable colleagues or 

guided by mentors) provides deep knowledge about how 

things really work that can’t be acquired in any other way. 

Thomas Horn’s story of a cultural change effort at Dryden 

shows you sometimes only discover the right way to do 

something difficult by trying what turns out to be the wrong 

way first. And Lynn Cline’s conversation about her four years 

negotiating Russian participation in the International Space 

Station includes important real-life lessons she learned from 

that experience.

“Learning from the NuSTAR Launch Delay” tells the story 

of how the efforts of NASA and Orbital Sciences to solve 

a problem with Orbital’s Pegasus launch vehicle taught the 

participants a great deal about how to work together and—

to Prusak’s point about knowledge embedded in practices 

and routines—contributed to NASA’s developing processes 

for working with a new generation of partners.

Don Cohen

Managing Editor

In This Issue

ASK MAGAZINE | 3
Who is responsible for the

knowledge that NASA creates? 

Since being named NASA’s Chief 

Knowledge Officer (CKO) at the 

beginning of 2012, I have given this 

question a lot of thought. Every center 

and mission directorate now has a 

CKO or point of contact who can 

speak to their organization’s approach to capturing and sharing 

lessons learned and best practices, tools and repositories, and other 

aspects of the trade. So there is a community of individuals with 

titles that indicate some responsibility for knowledge at NASA.

But the circle of stakeholders is far broader than the 

individuals tapped with formal responsibility for knowledge. 

Mission success at NASA requires expertise in a wide range 

of disciplines beyond project management and engineering, 

including safety and mission assurance, acquisition, and human 

capital, to name a few. 

Knowledge has always been the province of every

practitioner. Knowledge is not a process or policy; it means a 

commitment to excellence based on daily decisions to share 

expertise, ask questions, collaborate with colleagues, and 

maintain vigilant commitment to continuous learning. It is also 

the search for innovation, technological and social.

Knowledge creation and sharing go on all the time among 

NASA’s 18,000 civil servants and tens of thousands of partners 

in industry and academia. Think of the dozens of lectures and 

brown-bag lunches that happen every day. The papers and 

conference talks. The wikis and posts on Yammer or Reddit. 

There is no way a centralized knowledge organization could 

keep up with—let alone manage—the sheer volume of it.

In other words, knowledge thrives through our people and 

happens everywhere across the agency.

So what role should the CKO play?

I believe there are two important advocacy roles: facilitator 

and champion.

Facilitator. The CKO should leverage, nurture, and 

highlight formal and informal work happening across the 

agency. As I mentioned in an earlier column, it was eye-opening 

to learn of the sheer volume of ongoing knowledge activity when 

we convened representatives from the knowledge community 

for the first time in February 2012. Since then, we have begun 

a more formal process of mapping existing knowledge services 

at NASA’s centers and mission directorates. When complete, 

the map will provide a major tool for practitioners looking for 

critical knowledge. It will also help us identify gaps and set a 

forward-looking agenda that addresses some of the agency’s 

top strategic priorities, such as the shifting demographics of 

the workforce and the changing relationship with industry in 

human spaceflight.

Champion. The CKO should serve as the conduit between 

workforce and leadership to ensure the workforce has the 

tools and resources necessary to meet NASA’s most pressing 

knowledge challenges. This is a two-way street: the CKO should 

also raise awareness among the workforce of the importance of 

developing a knowledge mind-set. As with safety, all of us are 

responsible for NASA’s knowledge; the CKO is responsible for 

not letting the rest of the agency lose sight of that essential fact.

The CKO role is still evolving, but given NASA’s 

decentralized nature, facilitation and advocacy are foundational 

capacities that will help establish effective ways of working with 

the broadest possible range of stakeholders. These roles need 

to support the ultimate goal of having an organization that 

encourages reflective practitioners who openly and honestly 

share their ideas and the lessons they learn. In the end, a CKO’s 

influence is limited; we are each responsible for developing a 

knowledge mind-set. Our health as a learning organization 

depends on it. ●

From the Academy Director

Knowledge and the Practitioner’s Mind-Set

 BY ED HOFFMAN 

4 | ASK MAGAZINE
laitbrO/hceltaC-LPJ/ASA N:itder CotohP

NuSTAR, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, contains the first focusing telescopes 

designed to look at high-energy X-ray radiation. It is expected to contribute to a better 

understanding of collapsing stars and black holes.

Learning from the NuSTAR Launch Delay

BY DON COHEN

Engineers in the final stages of assembling NuSTAR.
Because NuSTAR is designed to function in an equatorial 

orbit, it launched on a Pegasus XL rocket from a point south 

of Kwajalein Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, on June 13, 2012. 

Built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, the Pegasus is carried 

to approximately 39,000 ft. by an L-1011 aircraft. Released at 

that altitude, the three-stage, winged rocket ignites its first-stage 

motor to continue its journey to orbit.

The June launch came almost three months after a planned 

early March launch date. The story of that delay—why it 

happened and what both NASA and Orbital Sciences learned 

from the experience—offers insight into how NASA deals with 

technical risks and into the agency’s developing relationships 

with commercial providers of launch vehicles and spacecraft 

now and in the future.

Why the Launch Delay?

Two issues needed to be resolved before NuSTAR could be 

approved for launch. One involved the Pegasus fairing—the 

streamlined shell at the nose of the rocket that protects the 

payload during its climb to orbit. The Pegasus fairing hardware 

was similar to that of the Taurus XL, which had failed to 

separate on two recent NASA missions; its added weight kept 

the Orbiting Carbon Observatory and the Glory spacecraft 

from reaching orbit. The cause or causes of those failures had 

not been definitively determined—the rockets fell into the sea 

so there was no physical evidence to examine. The Pegasus 

fairing had been somewhat redesigned to reduce the likelihood 

of a similar failure, but that created its own uncertainty, since 

the new design had never been tested in flight.

A second issue had to do with the fact that the flight 

computer aboard Pegasus and the associated flight software and 

simulation software were new. This change was a jointly funded 

reliability improvement by Orbital and the NASA Launch 

Services Program (LSP) to replace an obsolescent, out-ofproduction industrial microcomputer (albeit with two decades 

of excellent performance) and bring the flight software and 

simulations up to current standards. Initially, the fairing issue 

seemed the more serious of the two. That expectation changed. 

The team studying the fairing issue concluded that the risk of a 

malfunction was minimal; the software concerns proved harder 

to resolve. NASA’s software team expressed growing concern 

over the lack of adequate simulation and test data. 

Reliable simulation data are essential. Omar Baez,

NuSTAR’s launch director, notes, “Rockets are not forgiving,” 

and Director of Launch Services Jim Norman adds, “All the 

vehicles need to reach 17,000 mph. Errors are amplified by 

the energies expended.” And, as NASA Chief Engineer Mike 

Ryschkewitsch points out, the only live “test” for a rocket is an 

actual launch. New aircraft, by contrast, can be tested bit by bit 

through a series of increasingly demanding flights that start by 

determining basic airworthiness and eventually map the limits 

of safe performance. Simulations matter for aircraft design and 

construction, too, of course, but not as critically.

Although data were arriving late from Orbital, the LSP 

technical team worked extremely hard to execute the plan 

during February and early March, and the mid-March launch 

date still seemed achievable, provided no further serious issues 

were identified. Unfortunately, as the date for the all-important 

guidance, navigation, and control review approached, both 

Orbital and LSP were finding that simulations exhibited far too 

many failed cases to proceed. 

With Orbital management responding to the magnitude of 

the problems, the contractor was providing large quantities of 

data and the LSP flight-analysis team demonstrated an ability 

to process it quickly and accurately. Suspected errors identified 

by NASA were being confirmed by Orbital right up until the 

night before the Flight Readiness Review (FRR). Both the 

LSP and Orbital teams put in extremely long hours that did 

not compromise the rigor and careful technical review and risk 

analysis. The LSP flight-analysis team held a final five-hour 

peer review on March 14, where every finding was either closed 

or identified as still open. Their rigor and diligence in the face 

of a launch deadline is an example of technical excellence not 

compromised by schedule pressure. 

Late on March 14 it became clear that Orbital could not 

resolve all the remaining items without making changes to the 

flight code and simulation models. The technical team informed 

management, and the launch opportunity was scrubbed.

“Take the Time to Do It Right”

Part of the NuSTAR story is about the support the mission team 

got for carrying out the analytical work that needed to be done, 

even if that meant a delayed launch. Because the Kwajalein 

Atoll launch site was reserved for a classified mission after the 

NuSTAR March launch window, taking more than a few extra 

days to resolve the technical issues would force the mission to 

wait months to launch the spacecraft. Realistically, the team 

was looking at a delay of at least three months and the extra 

costs associated with it.

NASA has long been sensitive to the tension between 

technical risks that need study and possible mitigation and the 

desire—sometimes the pressure—to launch on schedule. The 

1986 Challenger disaster brought the issue into tragic prominence. 

Reluctance to delay that launch was one of a complex of 

organizational factors that led to the disaster. Since then, the 

agency has improved its FRR process and practice to ensure all 

technical issues are heard and discussed, and that “launch fever” 

does not drown out voices expressing concerns about unresolved 

6 | ASK MAGAZINE
inoduae ByndaR/ASA N:tide CrothoP

Technicians review their checklists after joining NASA’s NuSTAR 

spacecraft with the Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket. 

ASK MAGAZINE | 7
risks. (See “Getting to ‘Yes’: The Flight Readiness Review,” by 

Matthew Kohut and Don Cohen, in the Winter 2010 issue of 

ASK Magazine for the story of a series of FRRs and technical 

work done before STS-119 was cleared for launch.)

Virtually everyone involved with NuSTAR agrees that 

technical teams got strong support for doing the work necessary 

to ensure a successful launch. Some individuals say they heard 

“mixed messages” from leadership—both “take all the time you 

need” and “hurry up and get it done.” Certainly the desire to 

solve the problems and launch as soon as possible was clear, but 

the strongest and most consistent message seems to have been 

“do it right.”

NuSTAR mission manager Garrett Skrobot recalls the 

meeting where Ryschkewitsch said, “If you guys need the time, 

take the time to do it right.” Recalling the delay discussion later, 

Ryschkewitsch commented, “It was a hard conversation, but not 

really that hard”—suggesting that, although no one welcomes a 

launch delay, it was clearly the right choice in this case. 

Mike Luther, deputy associate administrator for programs 

in the Science Mission Directorate, communicated the same 

message, saying, “We won’t launch until we’re ready.”

Amanda Mitskevich notes that the project carried out 

regular extensive teleconferences with stakeholders about

progress on the technical issues. The entire NuSTAR community 

(which included Goddard Space Flight Center, Jet Propulsion 

Laboratory, Orbital Sciences, and NASA Headquarters, among 

others) knew what was happening: why the delay was necessary 

and what was being done to resolve the software issues. So there 

were no groups within NuSTAR pushing for an earlier launch 

or expressing frustration because they were out of the loop and 

did not understand what was going on.

As a result of extensive support and good communication, 

Mitskevich believes, the teams working on the technical issues 

were not especially burdened by what she calls “additional 

pressure” to solve the problems faster—that is, in addition 

to their own internal drive to do the work thoroughly and as 

quickly as possible.

As soon as the specific nature of the difficulties came to 

light, the Orbital and NASA engineering and management 

teams blended complementary technical approaches to 

identifying and solving problems. The mutually reinforced 

technical rigor overcame problems in a relatively short time, 

while the management teams cooperated to delay the launch to 

give the engineers the breathing room they needed to implement 

all necessary fixes and validations.

If Orbital was initially largely “reactive” to NASA’s concerns, 

it soon became much more proactive and constructive. What 

could have been an adversarial situation developed into a 

partnership. Both Orbital and NASA software teams worked 

“tremendous hours” to solve the problems, according to Baez. ASA: Ntidero CtohP

An Orbital Sciences technician completes final checks of NASA’s NuSTAR 

inside the Orbital processing facility before the Pegasus payload fairing is 

secured around it.

8 | ASK MAGAZINE
And Orbital began reviewing simulation software for other 

vehicles on its own initiative.

Later in the spring and comfortably before the rescheduled 

launch date, NASA and Orbital had made enough progress to 

be confident they would be ready to OK that June launch.

Some Lessons

Baez notes that the NuSTAR experience was “a software 

education for a lot of people.” Certainly the problems were a 

reminder that software has grown to be an increasingly complex 

and absolutely critical element of all space missions. Failing 

to give it the attention it deserves invites disaster. (For a good 

analysis of this issue, see “Is Software Broken?” by Steve Jolly 

in the Spring 2009 issue of ASK.) The generally high morale 

of the NuSTAR technical team was tempered by the nagging 

suspicion that if software testing had occurred sooner—a 

prudent approach for new code and simulation tools—many of 

the problems could have been caught and corrected earlier.

In the case of Pegasus, NASA and Orbital failed to fully 

anticipate the difficulty in maintaining communication,

continuity, and comprehension of the full software and simulation 

as a coupled system. This complexity added to the now obvious 

rationale to start simulation and software testing sooner.

The more general lesson, Skrobot points out, is that any

new element in a launch vehicle should be looked at as early and 

as thoroughly as possible. Figure out what the hard questions 

are, says Skrobot, and ask them.

Toward a New Way of Working

The NuSTAR launch delay experience is important beyond this 

particular mission because it is a step toward defining NASA’s 

developing working relationship with the commercial providers 

of launch vehicles and spacecraft that will be an important part 

of NASA’s future. Both NASA and those companies are in the 

process of learning what they need to do—individually and 

together—to produce launch vehicles that are reliable but also 

relatively economical and profitable for their creators.

NASA has never developed rockets on its own, of course. 

Boeing, Douglas, Lockheed Martin, and other aerospace 

companies have had a major role in designing and building the 

Atlas, Saturn, Delta, and other launch vehicles the agency has 

depended on until now. But those vehicles were the products of 

extremely close (and expensive) cooperation between NASA and 

those contractors. In effect, those vehicles were jointly designed 

and extensively tested by both NASA and contractors.

Today, commercial companies like Orbital Sciences

and SpaceX are building new rockets with much less direct 

involvement and oversight from NASA. The agency needs to be 

sure that these new vehicles are reliable, but must do it in ways 

that allow those companies to keep their costs down, ultimately 

reducing the cost to NASA as well.

In other words, NASA needs to develop—and is 

developing—some version of what Ryschkewitsch calls 

“parenting mode,” trying to find the right balance of guidance 

and help on one hand and letting commercial providers 

make and correct their own mistakes on the other. Being too 

involved—asking for too much documentation or too much 

testing to prove reliability—reduces risk but drives up cost 

when the rationale for the new relationship with commercial 

developers is to find less expensive ways to send cargo and crews 

into space.

The NuSTAR experience is helping NASA and Orbital 

learn to define that balance. For a time, NASA may have been too

hands-off in regard to the software issues. As Skrobot suggests, 

it is important to ask the hard questions. The lesson for NASA 

may be to carefully target its “parental” oversight—to identify 

the potential problem areas early and focus attention and 

resources on them. Asking tough questions about everything 

would be intrusive and wastefully expensive; asking the right 

tough questions is essential. Knowing what those questions 

are is not necessarily easy, though, except in hindsight. James 

Wood, LSP chief engineer, says, “I don’t know how to ask the 

mythical ‘hard questions’ and neither does anyone else.” 

As NASA reduces its traditional high level of oversight, 

Orbital and other commercial providers need to ensure they

devote the resources necessary to ensure vehicle reliability. 

Having a relatively lean team is important to efficiency and 

therefore profitability, but they need to know when lean is 

too lean. As NASA’s “parenting” becomes less intrusive, their 

responsibility for quality and performance increases.

Testing or Flight Success

There are, notes Ryschkewitsch, two ways of determining 

acceptable risk: testing and documentation, or a history of flight 

success. Seventy to eighty successful Soyuz flights are a reasonable 

substitute for a lot of testing and documentation. Vehicles 

recently developed or under development obviously don’t have 

that kind of flight history. Building a record of success through 

flights whose failure would not harm crews or programs is one 

strategy for developing the next generation of vehicles. So, for 

instance, NASA was willing to let SpaceX take responsibility for 

the launch of the Falcon 9 and Dragon that carried cargo to the 

International Space Station in May and October 2012. NASA’s 

main involvement was ensuring that the approach and docking 

would work and not endanger the station. The success of that 

flight is (ideally) the beginning of a track record that will give 

NASA confidence in the reliability of a vehicle designed without 

extensive agency oversight.

ASK MAGAZINE | 9
Similarly, the successful NuSTAR launch helps build 

confidence in the current version of the Pegasus. That success 

and all the testing done are important preparation for the next 

Pegasus-based mission. The fairing analysis done for NuSTAR 

similarly will serve future missions. As part of the analysis, 

the NASA team removed a tiny piece of the frangible joint of 

the Pegasus fairing hardware to test its hardness. This made 

NuSTAR people unhappy, as would any change to their launch 

vehicle, no matter how small, but the information gained will 

benefit the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, which is 

expected to launch via Pegasus in 2013, and later missions.

But the flight-success criterion is not always as straightforward 

as it sounds. Pegasus had been in operation for more than twenty 

years before the NuSTAR launch and has had more than forty 

successful flights—the kind of success record that normally 

inspires confidence. But the modified fairing design and new 

flight computer and software had not been flight tested and 

therefore needed oversight. And this is far from a unique or even 

an unusual problem; long-lived launch vehicles frequently have 

some elements that become obsolete or unavailable and must be 

replaced—and tested to ensure their reliability.

An additional way to manage the new oversight relationship, 

Ryschkewitsch suggests, is to have NASA engineers sit in with 

commercial designers as companies develop their new vehicles 

or new vehicle elements. If the NASA people are satisfied 

with the design process and testing within the company, they 

recommend the appropriate (limited) amount of documentation 

NASA should require.

Shaping a New Partnership

Whatever ultimately characterizes the relationship between 

NASA and the developers of future launch vehicles, it is certain 

that it will be shaped by experiences like NuSTAR and the 

Falcon 9 program. The general outlines of what will be required 

are clear now—less control by NASA, more responsibility 

taken on by the commercial companies. But precisely how the 

partners should work together—the details that fill in that 

general outline—can only be developed through multiple 

experiences of facing and solving problems like the NuSTAR 

software issues.

Since every NASA mission has some unique elements, 

that learning process will continue, with better and better 

understanding of the potential and pitfalls of the new 

relationships. In the new environment the agency is operating 

in, NASA’s Launch Services Program is both the pathfinder and 

the partner in a new way of working. ●

BCU/hcetlaC-LJP/ASA N:tide CrothoP

The L-1011 “Stargazer” carrier plane that gave NuSTAR and its rocket a 

lift to their airborne launch site is seen at sunrise on Kwajalein Atoll in 

the Pacific Ocean. NuSTAR and its Pegasus XL rocket are strapped to 

the bottom of the plane.

10 | ASK MAGAZINE
Changing the Project Execution 

Culture at NASA Dryden

 BY THOMAS J. HORN

A series of audits and workforce surveys at Dryden Flight Research Center in 2009 and early 

2010 identified declining on-time performance and workforce morale as major issues at the 

center. Dryden’s senior management decided that something had to change in the way we 

managed our projects. 

The center has been delivering high-quality flight-research 

projects for more than six decades. Budget realities and changing 

mission assignments have changed the center’s focus from a 

relatively small number of major flight-research projects to a 

plethora of airborne science missions and generally smaller (in 

terms of budget, staffing, duration, and research focus) research 

projects. Old ways of tracking and managing the center’s work 

were no longer effective and workforce stress was skyrocketing. 

Dryden was the poster child within the agency for high 

levels of multitasking both at an organizational and individual 

level. Change had to happen and had to be deeper than using 

some new software tool to gather data to tell us what we 

already knew. That had been tried before. Real change also 

had to change the project management philosophies that had 

guided successful operations for many years. This wasn’t going 

to be easy.

InsIght | ASK MAGAZINE | 11
Dryden’s senior management chose to implement the 

tools and philosophies of critical chain project management. 

(A web search will provide many sources of information on 

CCPM.) I was asked to lead that effort through the first year of 

implementation. As expected, we experienced challenges during 

that initial phase. I hope this description of Dryden’s experience 

will provide some valuable lessons for others.

Facing Workforce Resistance

The first two challenges we faced were directly related to the 

central CCPM tenets of rapid issue resolution and limiting 

the amount of “work in progress” at any given moment. 

Management’s efforts to probe issues surrounding slow progress 

on projects were perceived as punishment. Efforts to limit work 

in progress generated perceptions of micromanagement in a 

workforce that prided itself on keeping “all the plates spinning.” 

We did not intend either to punish or micromanage, but those 

perceptions led to resistance in communicating issues up the 

management chain and even reluctance to communicate 

information about what work was being done.

Regardless of our good intentions, we could not simply 

figure out what was wrong with the workforce and then change 

it. In fact, we could only control, and therefore change, our own 

behaviors and actions with the hope that those new behaviors 

and actions would change workforce perceptions. 

To change the perception that raising issues was punishment, 

management altered how we probed those issues. As an 

engineering and research organization, we tended to ask “why” 

things didn’t work the way we expected. But “why” questions 

generate defensiveness and can turn discussions of issues into 

interrogations. Turning “why” questions into “what” questions 

tends to focus the conversation on understanding the issue and 

moving forward—as long as we stay away from questions along 

the lines of “what were you thinking?” 

A second key behavior is to provide timely help to resolve 

issues. Perceptions change when the workforce sees issues being 

effectively resolved before they become big, difficult problems.

Early in our CCPM implementation, one of our flight 

projects needed to replace a faulty pressure transducer required 

for research. This issue was identified at our weekly center 

work review as preventing progress on the project. Questioning 

focused on what was needed to acquire the replacement. Much 

to everyone’s surprise, the director for Research and Engineering 

said he had sufficient funds in his budget to cover the $1,500 

cost and told the project to submit their purchase request. This 

seemingly simple resolution made everyone in the room sit up 

and take notice: raising the issue resulted in concrete, immediate 

help instead of an inquisition. 

The perception of micromanagement is much harder to 

change. Any change—not just the work scheduling aspects 

of CCPM—can arouse feelings of micromanagement as 

organizational leaders try to prescribe, motivate, enforce, and 

otherwise develop new processes and behaviors. Large changes 

are often, if not usually, driven by long-term goals that may 

not begin to manifest their benefits at the workforce level for 

months or years. 

Dryden’s CCPM implementation has several long-term goals 

associated with reducing workforce stress and other workforce 

issues. When the workforce didn’t start to see those benefits 

after a few months of implementation, the micromanagement 

sentiment began to increase. I believe this situation must be 

dealt with in the change-planning process by carefully crafting 

TO ChANGE ThE PERCEPTION ThAT RAISING ISSuES WAS PuNIShMENT, MANAGEMENT 

ALTERED hOW WE PRObED ThOSE ISSuES. AS AN ENGINEERING AND RESEARCh 

ORGANIZATION, WE TENDED TO ASK “Why” ThINGS DIDN’T WORK ThE WAy WE 

ExPECTED. buT “Why” quESTIONS GENERATE DEfENSIvENESS AND CAN TuRN 

DISCuSSIONS Of ISSuES INTO INTERROGATIONS.

12 | ASK MAGAZINE
not only long-term goals but goals and expectations throughout 

the implementation process. The workforce needs to be able to 

see progress and ideally reap some benefit throughout the whole 

process. For example, Dryden’s CCPM implementation may 

have benefited from more easily achieved and recognized goals 

of providing desktop access to task-priority information and 

upcoming tasks followed by individual multitasking targets. 

The ultimate goals of better on-time performance and increased 

time for research and skill development should have been deemphasized in favor of nearer-term expectations. 

In Dryden’s case, the implementation of CCPM was 

intended to improve the performance of the center in part 

by improving our ability to move people between projects. 

This runs counter to Dryden’s previous culture of dedicated 

project teams, each trying to get its project done without much 

consideration of their impact on other projects. In addition to 

the pride and esprit de corps felt by a Dryden project team as 

their project literally takes flight, there are issues of insufficient 

technical depth and knowledge loss encountered when people 

shift from one project to another.

The focus of pride and esprit de corps can be widened to 

include larger organizational goals through the choice of 

metrics and rewards. For instance, lateness may be measured 

as an aggregate organizational metric instead of an individual 

project metric. Rewarding individuals and projects that sacrifice 

a little schedule performance on their project to help another 

struggling project is another important strategy.

The issues of technical depth and project knowledge are far 

harder to deal with and can have dire safety and productivity 

consequences if not managed appropriately. Cross-training of 

the workforce and proper phasing of the organization’s work can 

help maintain the necessary levels of expertise on each project 

even when skilled team members move to other projects. Our 

CCPM implementation has highlighted areas where crosstraining would be of benefit, and it has occurred in some 

areas. Widespread cross-training has been limited by the costs 

(course tuition and time) associated with that training, however. 

Phasing of the work has been much more prevalent. As a branch 

manager, I have much better information at my fingertips to 

help me phase work within my branch as well as to anticipate 

and prepare for periods of high demand in the future.

Learning from Change

Change usually comes in the form of doing something new and 

different—a step into the unknown. We therefore want to make 

sure every detail is right before we step off that ledge so the 

change doesn’t cause unnecessary problems and turmoil in the 

organization. Unfortunately, trying to get every detail right can 

lead to “paralysis by analysis,” burdening management and the 

change-implementation team and ultimately preventing rather 

than preparing for change. Furthermore, getting every detail 

right isn’t really possible when those non-deterministic systems 

we call “humans” are involved.

There are certainly some “showstopper” issues and largescale business practices that must be dealt with prior to 

implementation. We should focus energy on those things that 

might cause the whole organization to grind to a halt. 

In the case of our CCPM implementation, accurate but not 

overly detailed schedules were needed to provide prioritized task 

lists for managers and team leaders. It was therefore necessary 

to have a process and resources available for efficiently building 

and revising project schedules before going “live” with CCPM. 

ASK MAGAZINE | 13
Rather than wasting time before implementation on imagined 

issues that might not actually manifest themselves, we should 

let the implementation itself tell us which details need attention. 

The key is having implementation team capacity and a plan in 

place to deal with the inevitable issues that arise during early 

implementation. Having processes in place to collect questions 

and problems, evaluate them, and act quickly to resolve the 

significant ones is critical. It is also necessary to have the 

capacity to coach new behaviors and revisit pre-implementation 

training when “book learning” meets reality. Finally, the 

implementation team must include people who have currently 

or recently performed the affected functions and understand the 

change being implemented. Those people have the best chance 

of understanding when pre-implementation planning has

reached the “good enough” point. Also, they have the respect 

that is critical in leading their peers through the change.

The final two challenges I want to address are phased 

implementation and the ability of the organization to focus longterm attention on the change. Phased implementation, though 

sometimes necessary for any number of reasons, has certain 

negative effects that a “cold turkey” implementation would avoid. 

A phased implementation prolongs the change process and sets up 

situations where different parts of the organization operate under 

different rules. In the case of Dryden’s CCPM implementation, 

most of our airborne science missions were to be phased into 

CCPM after the initial implementation, which included our 

aeronautics research projects. This was due to the limited capacity 

of the implementation team and the different character of the 

science projects. Aeronautics research projects were prioritized 

based on predicted lateness while airborne science projects 

received no such daily prioritization. It was therefore difficult for 

managers and team leaders to judge the relative daily priority of 

tasks across Dryden’s full portfolio of projects.

We learned these lessons about phased implementation: 

• If a phased implementation is absolutely necessary, 

carefully define the scope of the essential phases to 

minimize the number of suborganizations that have to 

operate both in and out of the change.

• W hether phasing implementation or not, always err on the 

side of overestimating required implementation resources.

• E liminate old processes, procedures, and ways of doing 

business as quickly as possible. Leaving pockets of “old 

ways” in the organization will only put drag on the 

change effort.

Increasing the duration of change implementation through 

phasing only makes it more difficult for organizational 

management to maintain needed focus on the change. Issues 

surrounding budgets and staffing levels and demands from 

Headquarters will necessarily draw management’s attention 

away from the change effort. They will likely leave it in the 

capable hands of their implementation team. But that team still 

needs management attention to approve process and procedural 

changes, maintain ownership of the implementation design, 

and generally promote and champion the change. 

It is important for a senior manager and her organization to 

be responsible for implementing and sustaining the change. An 

ad hoc implementation team is still important, though, to provide 

extra staffing to push the change design and implementation 

and bring affected organizations into the process. Management 

must lead the change by example, and only management has 

14 | ASK MAGAZINE
the authority to change the underlying rules, processes, and 

procedures of the organization.

Progress and Lessons

After nearly two years of implementation, Dryden is still 

working to fully implement the processes and philosophies of 

CCPM in all its projects. Several things have helped achieve the 

desired change:

• Having representation from each affected directorate on 

the initial implementation team

• Providing solutions when issues are raised

• Management taking ownership and responsibility for 

continued implementation of the change

Some things I would do differently if I were doing this work 

over again:

• I nstituting near-term goals, metrics, and rewards for the 

initial implementation to provide motivation through the 

challenging times of initial implementation

• Including two representatives (instead of one) from each 

affected directorate on the initial implementation team; 

this would allow one to focus on solution design and the 

other to focus on training and coaching

I want to leave you with some key points that I hope will 

make your next change implementation more successful:

• T rue change that significantly improves the performance 

of our organizations comes from changing how people 

think about and execute their jobs at all levels of the 

organization. This is hard.

• It takes a lot of resources, particularly people, to implement 

the change. Don’t underestimate those requirements.

• C hoose near-term and ultimate goals, metrics, and rewards 

carefully. They need to be constructed to demonstrate 

and celebrate early progress toward ultimate goals and 

drive the desired new behaviors. 

• Once change is launched, execute implementation quickly. 

Purge old ways of doing business from the organization 

and make the new philosophies and tools the way the 

organization operates.

• Senior management must lead the way through 

communication and action. Questions to their staff 

should force people to think about going forward into the 

change, not looking back to justify past actions. ●

Thomas J. horn is currently chief of the Aerostructures Branch 

at Dryden Flight Research Center, where he previously served as 

a thermal-structures test engineer supporting various groundand flight-research projects. He is a 2012 recipient of the NASA 

Outstanding Leadership Medal for his leadership of the initial 

critical chain project management implementation at Dryden.

ASK MAGAZINE | 15
Battling Flight-Schedule “KillerS”

BY ANN OvER

ASA: Ntidero CtohP

System thermal-vacuum testing 

performed on the SCaN Testbed.

16 | ASK MAGAZINE | story
The STB team overcame many “schedule-killing” technical issues 

to meet the launch schedule. They succeeded thanks to careful 

schedule management, heroic technical efforts, and a bit of luck. 

At the time of the preliminary design review (PDR), the 

team needed to design, fabricate, and assemble almost one 

thousand pounds of flight hardware and half a million lines 

of software code for shipment in less than two years. To add 

to the complications, two of three software-defined radios 

were obtained via cooperative agreements, which were not 

traditional contracts with incentivized deliveries. SCaN Testbed 

was the first International Space Station payload installed on 

the Express Logistics Carrier on orbit, and the Japanese H-II 

Transfer Vehicle (HTV) interface was a new design. 

Schedule management did not come easy. Because STB was 

“just a technology project,” not one of the more visible science 

missions, the scope of the effort was readily underestimated. Just 

prior to September 2009, at the time of the PDR, the schedule 

had four months of “negative slack.” In other words, if all went 

right, STB would miss its scheduled ship date by four months. 

At that time, the team adopted a new philosophy that 

infused the project for the rest of the development cycle. The 

schedule was optimized to fit the available hardware and 

software by challenging traditional NASA testing paradigms. 

For example, we were told you cannot do tracking and datarelay satellite system compatibility testing until the entire 

system is assembled. We conducted most of our compatibility 

testing before antennas were installed, accelerating that test by 

more than six months. That new approach created a positive 

two weeks of margin. 

Two other management techniques were deployed to 

maintain the schedule. First, schedule risk consequences were 

analyzed and ranked in terms of weeks, rather than months, as 

for most NASA schedule risks. Second, an aggressive tracking, 

reporting, and corrective-action system was put in place. Weekly 

schedule meetings focused on the critical tasks, milestones, and 

interface points that were drivers for the next two weeks of work. 

If a date slipped, a corrective-action plan was presented and 

approved on the spot. A key tenet was delegation of authority 

and resources to the subproject managers (work breakdown 

structure leads) and their test managers for critical tests. This 

rigorous schedule management demanded discipline, hard 

work, and emotional perseverance. Many times it was one step 

forward, two back, and the team often worked overtime to get 

that “step” back. Finally, through it all, there was humor—you 

just had to laugh because maintaining the schedule seemed so 

impossible at times.

Most complex spaceflight developments have technical 

challenges and issues. STB had more than most, each one 

capable of killing the schedule. The schedule was certainly 

wounded more than once. The team was ultimately successful 

thanks to four factors: exemplary guidance and execution by the 

chief engineer; passionate commitment by the team; proactive 

reaching out to the wider community of experts to solve issues; 

and effective decision making by project management. 

Resolving Killer Problems

There were dozens of major issues. These three are representative 

of the problems and our approach to solutions.

Problem 1: Requirements 

The HTV carrier was in co-development with STB, so 

requirements at the interfaces were not well defined. To save 

schedule, the radio structural-load requirements were estimated 

to allow work on them to proceed, but they were set too low. 

Post-PDR, the first coupled-loads analysis showed the payload 

system, including the radios, had numerous negative structural 

margins. Also after PDR, the International Space Station carrier 

discovered a structural analytical issue that was corrected by 

multiplying all the launch loads by a factor of 1.6, making the 

problem that much harder. 

The project recovered by conducting a structural test 

to validate the dynamic model, redesigning the thickness of 

The Space Communications and Networking (SCaN) Testbed (STB) is a flight and ground system 

delivered on a fast-track schedule by Glenn Research Center. As its name suggests, the SCaN Testbed 

is a technical and programmatic advancement of communications technology that will pave the 

way for future space-communication architectures. It consists of reconfigurable software-defined 

radios that give mission planners the ability to change radio functionality while on orbit.

ASK MAGAZINE | 17
radiator plates, adding a significant number of fasteners, working 

with radio vendors to increase loads tolerance via analysis and 

test, updating the model using a better carrier-interface model, 

and implementing force-limiting for testing and analysis to 

achieve flight certification—all hard, time-consuming, painful 

activities. Force-limiting is a way to concurrently simulate the 

acceleration and launch forces to avoid overtesting on a rigid 

mount; force-limiting for analysis is a state-of-the-art practice 

used to qualify structures when margins are tight.

To save costs, projects often use donated or heritage designs. 

STB was no different. Given the amount of heritage technology, 

we attempted to build system requirements from the subsystems, 

via a “bottom-up” approach. This led to issues later.

We used heritage “flight-qualified” designs from Lunar 

Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), including the traveling wave 

tube amplifier and the antenna pointing system (APS). The 

traveling wave tube amplifier, fortunately, was not an issue (a 

good-news story for heritage hardware). The special challenge 

was the APS, since it was not required to be safety critical for 

human-rating on LRO, nor was it designed for our structural or 

thermal environment requirements.

Recovery involved a significant redesign, including 

thirteen purchase-order modifications and cost growth from 

$3.4 million to $6.6 million. The entire system schedule 

was adjusted to accommodate a twelve-month delivery slip, 

including production of a high-fidelity vibration simulator 

for system vibration testing and other simulators for system 

performance testing. But the critical-path schedule never had 

downtime waiting for the APS; the vibration simulator was a 

significant cost, but it bought seven months of schedule to allow 

system vibration testing without the APS.

Here’s the takeaway: Beware of heritage flight-qualified 

hardware, especially for use in human-rated systems that 

generally have stricter requirements. Do not use a commercial 

purchase order if the heritage hardware needs to be modified. 

This procurement type is not designed for changes and, 

typically, the contractor takes on more risk and the government 

pays higher overhead. 

Problem 2: SpaceWire

Given very high data-rate requirements and the other NASA 

successes with SpaceWire, STB chose it for the internal 

communications architecture. Several issues were uncovered 

during development. SpaceWire hardware is not robust and 

interface standards are not mature. The cables failed after 

simple transportation events, and at one point the high data 

rates worked but low rates didn’t. 

Given that success of the project depended on SpaceWire 

functioning properly, we took several parallel actions to recover. 

STB conducted nondestructive and then destructive testing 

ASA: Ntidero CtohP

The SCaN Testbed undergoes system 

electromagnetic-interference testing.

18 | ASK MAGAZINE
of the hardware at Glenn and the Naval Research Laboratory, 

and eventually rebuilt several cables (including an in-situ

replacement while on a vibration table), rerouted cables

to improve bend radii, and added padding for tie-downs. 

Resolution of the data-rate issue that involved both firmware 

and software was more elusive. 

Two generations of tiger teams external to the project team 

were deployed to investigate performance issues. We consulted 

experts within NASA and in industry. Using systematic testing 

and analysis, STB eventually found the major cause of interface 

incompatibility between the firmware elements. These efforts 

lasted almost a year. During that time, system testing proceeded 

using the capability available with very little retesting required. 

(Retesting would have delayed shipment a year.) For example, 

a late field-programmable gate array (FPGA) upgrade was 

necessary after system thermal and electromagnetic-interference 

testing; recertification was accomplished with analysis and 

subsystem testing only.

... bEWARE Of hERITAGE fLIGhT-quALIfIED hARDWARE, ESPECIALLy fOR uSE IN 

huMAN-RATED SySTEMS ThAT GENERALLy hAvE STRICTER REquIREMENTS.

Integrating SpaceWire with the SCaN Testbed required 

eventually rebuilding several cables, rerouting cables to 

improve bend radii, and adding padding for tie-downs.

ASA: Ntidero CtohP

ASK MAGAZINE | 19
Four major lessons: SpaceWire performance is great, but 

buyer beware, since the hardware is not robust and firmware/

software interface standards/algorithms are not mature. Second, 

for any FPGA use, target FPGAs that are reliably reprogrammable 

without removal from the system. Third, when you run into a 

technical problem that threatens mission success, mobilize all 

available resources to solve it; include expertise outside the team. 

Finally, past success of components on other missions doesn’t 

mean you won’t have problems with them.

Problem 3: Safety

Meeting human-spaceflight safety requirements is one of the 

hardest engineering jobs at NASA. For STB, the Phase 0/1 

flight-safety review was conducted after PDR when the avionics 

subsystem design was firm, limiting the design options to 

adequately address safety hazards identified during the review 

process. A significant new issue was identified for safety during 

Ka-band operations, requiring flight software to provide two 

controls to verify power was off when crew or vehicles were 

within line of sight. If the beam of the Ka-band antenna were 

to directly line up with an astronaut or vehicle, it could 

potentially cause personal injury or equipment failure. 

In response, significant project resources were expended 

to modify the SpaceWire architecture to implement two

verifiable and independent inhibits within a single central 

processing unit (CPU) and to develop the associated safetycritical software. Ultimately, STB became the first space station 

payload to demonstrate adequate control-path separation for 

two independent inhibits to be controlled by a single CPU. We 

implemented this capability incrementally to be able to meet the 

system testing schedule.

The lesson: Safety requirements should be part of the 

design process, including input and review external to the 

project by the applicable safety-certification group. For example, 

complete the Phase 0/1 flight-safety review before the designs 

are solidified. Reliance on safety-critical software for primary 

controls in a human-rated space environment is expensive and 

time consuming; hardware options are generally easier to design 

and verify.

Luck Matters, Too

The final factor in the success of the SCaN Testbed was luck. 

We were lucky that the launch date moved much later to give 

us time to reduce risk with more testing. We were lucky to have 

a supportive management within NASA and at the vendors, 

especially the NASA Headquarters SCaN Program Office and 

Glenn senior management, who supported us every step of the 

way, including finding the resources to fix the issues. Finally, 

we were extremely lucky to have such a dedicated, passionate 

team, who worked very hard for the mission and—more 

importantly—for each other. 

The NASA and industry partnership proved up to the 

challenge of meeting an extremely tight schedule. The team 

overcame many issues to meet the HTV-3 launch schedule. Key 

to meeting schedule was to make progress with the available 

functionality and to assign a talented and dedicated team. 

The testbed was successfully launched from Japan on July 20, 

2012, and installed on the International Space Station. Initial 

checkout operations were also successful and science operations 

are expected to begin in October. ●

Software engineers work in the background as Glenn Research Center 

technician Joe Kerka rotates the SCaN Testbed flight-enclosure 

assembly using a specially manufactured mount. 

ninwh Sc. LintneuQ/ASA N:tide CrothoP

20 | ASK MAGAZINE

... WhEN yOu RuN INTO A TEChNICAL 

PRObLEM ThAT ThREATENS MISSION 

SuCCESS, MObILIZE ALL AvAILAbLE 

RESOuRCES TO SOLvE IT; INCLuDE 

ExPERTISE OuTSIDE ThE TEAM.
or be viewed as less important just because 

they had a smaller budget or weren’t 

providing as large an infrastructure as 

the Russians. Group relations changed 

from when you were speaking bilaterally 

to when you were speaking multilaterally 

and depending on which combination of 

partners you had in the room.

cohen: Was there an element of good-cop 

bad-cop in the multilateral negotiations?

clIne: Absolutely. As lead negotiator I 

most often had to be the bad cop because 

the original partners—Canada, Europe, 

and Japan—were nervous that they would 

somehow lose rights and obligations by 

bringing in this larger partner. So when 

we were meeting without the Russians, 

either multilaterally or bilaterally, I would 

During her thirty-six-year career at NASA, Lynn Cline led U.S. 

delegations to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful 

Uses of Outer Space and served as NASA’s lead negotiator of 

the agreement that resulted in Russia becoming a partner in the 

International Space Station (ISS). At the time of her retirement at 

the end of 2011, she was NASA’s deputy associate administrator 

for Human Exploration and Operations.

 INTERvIEW WITH

 Lynn

 Cline

BY DON COHEN

InsIght | ASK MAGAZINE | 21
hear, “You can’t let the Russians do this, 

we insist on that, we can’t change this, 

we must have that.” When we got in 

the room with the Russians they would 

rely on me to do the talking. There were 

times when partners would play off of

one another’s views. I could do it, too. 

I could tell the Russians, “Gee, I’d

accommodate you but then I’d lose

the Europeans.” Or “the Japanese can’t 

change.” The other partners did the same 

thing. It was a challenge to understand 

what were the real issues and what were 

negotiating tactics.

cohen: What were some of the 

challenging issues?

clIne: In the first round of negotiations, 

before Russia was brought in, there was 

a provision that said we’d endeavor to 

minimize the exchange of funds. If the 

U.S. was going to be the primary operator 

of the station and everyone was sharing 

the operational cost, then the partners 

would need to pay us their share. 

They did not want to send cash to the 

U.S. to meet those financial obligations; 

they wanted to provide goods and 

services instead. Out of that came 

things like the European Automated 

Transfer Vehicle. They wanted to spend 

their money on jobs with European 

industry and provide cargo services to 

pay part of their operating costs rather 

than send money to the U.S. Once we 

agreed to that understanding with 

Europe, Japan wanted to do the 

same. That’s how we ended up with 

the HTV [H-II Transfer Vehicle], 

the Japanese cargo vehicle. What we 

did in the discussions was ensure that 

the European and Japanese cargo 

vehicles were quite different to make 

them complementary. Similarly with 

the Russians, we did not want to be 

sending them money and they did not 

want to be sending us money. So we 

had to figure out how many things 

we could barter back and forth to help 

WHEREvER WE WENT, THERE WAS SoMEBoDY who 

organized a dinner oR SoMETHING THAT we could do 

together. WE GoT To KNoW WHo WAS married, WHo 

HAD kids, WHERE THEY WENT oN vacation, WHAT THEIR 

hobbies WERE. 

22 | ASK MAGAZINE
balance out those financial obligations. 

We ended up trying to trade off and 

come out even. We both have a mission 

control, one in Houston one in Moscow: 

let’s call that even. We both train 

astronauts: let’s call that even. We tried 

to balance everything out. In the end, 

there were some remaining financial 

obligations over and above the things 

that we traded off.

cohen: For instance?

clIne: A lot of it ended up being U.S. 

payments to Russia for certain things. If 

we had nothing left to trade against, then 

we’d pay for it. The first element of the 

space station that was launched was built 

by the Russians but actually paid for by 

the U.S., and in the legal agreement is 

considered a U.S. element.

cohen: There were so many moving 

parts in the negotiations; it’s amazing 

it all came together.

clIne: It was definitely a challenging 

and complicated process. Keep in mind 

that the negotiations took four years 

to accomplish. The invitation to the 

Russians to join the partnership officially 

was issued in 1993, and I guess it was 

’97 when the negotiations were finally 

completed. Then the language of the 

negotiations had to be verified and so 

on. It was early ’98 when the signing 

ceremony was held.

cohen: How much time did you spend 

actually meeting and negotiating?

clIne: I was on the road very frequently. 

There were multiple negotiations ongoing. 

At the top level, I was one of the NASA 

representatives to the intergovernmental 

agreement negotiations. That was a State 

Department–led political multilateral

agreement above the space agency–

level memoranda of understanding. We 

met periodically, one meeting in the 

U.S., one overseas, one in the U.S., one 

overseas. At the space agency level, they 

are all bilateral agreements. If Europe 

asked for changes, I would have to 

convey them in turn to Canada, Japan, 

and Russia and get all those countries 

to agree before I could agree to them. In 

the end, even though there are separate 

bilateral agreements, there are certain 

provisions that have to be identical

across the board because you can’t have 

five different management approaches. 

Since we were meeting bilaterally, it was 

a highly iterative process. You had to 

come back to the same points over and 

over. How many rounds do you have to 

go before everyone is on board for the 

same compromise for that particular 

provision? It was very time consuming.

cohen: Did you enjoy the process?

clIne: At times. At times I was ready 

to tear my hair out. One of the things 

we agreed to at the beginning of our 

negotiations—here is a lesson in human 

nature—was that it would be good for 

us to get to know each other as human 

beings outside the negotiating room. 

We agreed that whoever was hosting a 

round of negotiations would organize a 

social event. Everybody would pay their 

own way. Wherever we went, there was 

somebody who organized a dinner or 

something that we could do together. We 

got to know who was married, who had 

kids, where they went on vacation, what 

their hobbies were. It made it a pleasure 

to work with these people. You could 

disagree across the table—everyone

respected that we were representing what 

our agencies needed—and then you could 

leave the disagreements on the table and 

go out and enjoy one another’s company. 

I made so many friends and learned so 

many things. I don’t regret doing it at all, 

as difficult as it was.

cohen: Were there wrong turns or dead 

ends in the negotiations?

clIne: The most difficult issue was the 

allocation for operations and utilization. 

In the first round of negotiations, before 

Russia joined the partnership, there was a 

calculation done of the approximate value 

of each partner’s on-orbit contribution. 

Everybody had a certain percentage

allocation and that percentage number 

determined how much crew time you 

got, how often you were allowed to 

fly an astronaut from your agency. It 

determined your cost obligation as well. 

We tried to figure out how to bring 

Russia into the scheme and could not 

do it. No matter what I proposed to the 

Russians as the basis for valuing their 

contribution, they had a different view. 

We couldn’t figure out how to reallocate all 

the resources after adding in Russia. That 

was a major sticking point. We pushed to 

fully integrate Russia into the rest of the 

program and make it a single, unified, 

cohesive international space station. In 

the end, we backed off and ended up 

with what we refer to as the “keep what 

ASK MAGAZINE | 23
you bring” solution. The Russians get to 

keep all the allocation of operation and 

utilization resources and obligations for 

elements that they contributed. On all 

the rest of the station, we maintained 

the sharing on a percentage basis from 

the original negotiations, though the 

percentage shares evolved over time. That 

was one issue where we never could reach 

a common understanding, so we ended 

up with these two parallel approaches.

cohen: Does that mean there are 

resources not shared with the Russians 

and vice versa?

clIne: Yes, but the allocation agreements 

allow for barters of various sorts. As the 

program evolves and things change, we 

have made trades across those borders. 

For example, the U.S. negotiated with 

Russia for the U.S. to provide power 

from the U.S. power system to operate 

the Russian segment elements, rather 

than them bringing up a whole separate 

power system. As difficult as they were 

to negotiate when everything was on 

paper and hypothetical, those allocations 

are only starting points.

cohen: Am I right in thinking that 

you undertook this work without a 

technical background?

clIne: That is correct. My background 

was French language and culture. I 

came into the international office as a 

co-op student when I was in college. As 

lead negotiator, I was not expected to 

be the technical expert. I had a whole 

team: someone from the program

office; someone representing the science 

community; someone from Houston 

who did a lot of the coordinating with 

the different elements at Johnson Space 

Center—the crew office, the safety 

office, the engineering folks, etc. I had 

someone from the legal office for all 

the legal terms and conditions. We had 

pre-meetings and we had a postmortem 

after each negotiating session. I relied 

on the other members of the team 

to make sure we understood what 

concerns other organizations at NASA 

might have that we needed to represent. 

We had constant feedback on all those 

sorts of things.

cohen: So lack of technical knowledge 

was not a problem?

clIne: Keep in mind that the agreements 

at this level are not highly technical. 

They’re more about the management 

structure, the rights and obligations. In 

parallel with what we were doing, there 

were ongoing technical discussions. We 

did have feedback going back and forth 

between those two levels. As an example, 

one of the things in the memoranda of 

understanding is a list of what each 

partner is providing. It was pretty well 

fixed for the U.S., Canada, Europe, 

and Japan because we had been at this 

for a while. I had a list of elements the 

WE STARTED oUT fighting over principles THAT WE 

THoUGHT WERE GoING To BE really important, BUT oNCE 

PEoPLE START working together AND build trust AND

respect FoR oNE ANoTHER, THEY FIGURE oUT HoW To 

work together WITHoUT HAvING To Go BACK To chapter 

and verse oF THE AGREEMENT ...

24 | ASK MAGAZINE
Russians were going to provide. When I 

got to the next round of negotiations, I’d 

be told the list wasn’t correct any more 

because they had discussions with JSC 

[Johnson Space Center] and decided to 

change a few things. The technical guys 

were off doing their technical thing. 

Sometimes I was ahead of them, and 

sometimes they were ahead of me. We 

just tried to keep in communication.

cohen: In retrospect, would you say the 

ISS agreements have been an effective 

basis for operating the station?

clIne: The framework I inherited from 

earlier negotiations is flexible. One 

of the things you need to avoid as a 

negotiator is getting too precise because 

things change, especially on a long-term 

program. Technical issues will arise; the 

policies of governments will change; 

administrations will change. I think 

these agreements have been remarkably 

flexible. We started out fighting over 

principles that we thought were going 

to be really important, but once people 

start working together and build trust 

and respect for one another, they figure 

out how to work together without 

having to go back to chapter and verse 

of the agreement and insist on what 

it says in Article 4, Chapter 3. It just 

becomes people working together who 

have a common goal. There were huge 

concerns in negotiations about would 

the U.S. ever exercise its right to make 

a decision even if the partners objected. 

Those were very important principles 

during the negotiations and certain 

rights were part of the agreement. But 

the fact of the matter is everything one 

partner does affects the others. The 

incentives are there to compromise and 

make things work. Once you get the 

politicians and the negotiators out of 

the way and you let the program people 

run the project, there’s a lot of freedom 

to make the program work the way you 

need it to.

cohen: The shared goal is so important.

clIne: We each came to it with a slightly 

different perspective and so the goal 

may not have been flavored identically 

for every country, but we all shared that 

vision. The program has evolved and 

survived some very difficult things. One 

was the fact that the Russian element—

the first element—was delivered eighteen 

months late, I think it was. That pushed 

back the entire schedule. Then we had the 

Columbia accident. I think it’s amazing 

that the partnership was strong enough 

to keep going by relying on the Russians 

and reducing our crew size to limit the 

logistics requirements. We came through 

that and resumed assembly.

cohen: Are there lessons from this 

negotiating experience that apply to 

other kinds of international issues?

clIne: There are common elements to 

international negotiations. Some are 

common sense things: understanding, for 

instance, what your partner’s objectives and 

needs are. You can’t just be a dictator and 

say, “This is how it’s going to be.” You have 

to have that give and take and listen and 

understand the other person’s perspective. 

A lot of it is basic good communication 

and building trust and relationships.

ASK MAGAZINE | 25
would ever get there because I couldn’t 

come up with any more arguments to use.

cohen: So the lesson is, hang in there 

because circumstances may change.

clIne: Right. And suppose those were 

points I did have flexibility on. I might 

have compromised and agreed to things 

I didn’t need. If you have a principle 

that you feel strongly about, it’s worth 

sticking to.

cohen: Are there opportunities for future 

international space negotiations coming up?

clIne: It’s not clear to me how soon. 

The most important thing is to keep 

the dialogue open so that when real 

opportunities do become available,

you’ve already built the foundation. 

The space station agreements didn’t 

happen magically. There were years of 

pre-discussion that identified common 

interests. Groups like the International 

Space Exploration Coordinating Group, 

which has fourteen space agencies in it, 

talk regularly about what sorts of things 

they’re thinking about. No one has a 

specific plan; they’re not negotiating 

agreements. They’re carrying on the 

dialogue. When there is a desire to do 

the next human exploration spaceflight 

activity, they’re poised and ready and 

know what the various countries’ 

likely interests are and where they 

can contribute. ●

THE SPACE STATIoN AGREEMENTS . 

THERE WERE years of pre-discussion THAT IDENTIFIED 

CoMMoN INTERESTS.

didn’t happen magically

26 | ASK MAGAZINE
B eyond the ISS

ThiS ArTicle iS excerpTed And AdApTed froM “STrucTuring fuTure inTernATionAl cooperATion: leArning 

froM The iSS,” by l. cline, p. finArelli, g. gibbS, And i. pryKe 

In September 1988, the United States, Canada, Japan, and ten member nations of the European 

Space Agency signed agreements that established what was originally the Space Station Freedom 

(SSF). Renegotiated agreements, which brought in Russia and established the International Space 

Station (ISS) program, were signed in January 1998. As the largest, most complex international 

scientific and technological cooperation undertaken, the program offers lessons that can help future 

large-scale international space endeavors. 

Long exposure of the space station 

in flight during Expedition 30.

Photo Credit: NASA

InsIght | ASK MAGAZINE | 27
Peaceful Purposes: Constructive Ambiguity

In any partnership, common terms may have different meanings 

and context depending on the partners’ field of expertise, 

experience, and culture. Creating a common definition can 

help avoid confusion down the line. For ISS, defining the term 

“peaceful purposes” from the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, and what 

activities honored that commitment, differed among partners. The 

ISS contributing nations debated the exact meaning of this phrase 

without resolution long before the space station negotiations. 

In SSF negotiations, the U.S. Department of Defense 

insisted they be able “to conduct national security activities on 

the U.S. elements of the station without the approval or review of 

other nations,” which was consistent with the U.S. interpretation 

of “peaceful purposes” that permits non-aggressive military 

activities in space. Canada, Europe, and Japan, on the other 

hand, demanded the agreements refer to “a civil space station for 

exclusively peaceful purposes,” implying no military-sponsored 

activity whatsoever. The issue arose again in ISS negotiations, 

with the Russian Federation government adopting much the 

same position as the United States. 

The solution in both negotiations was that each partner 

would define “peaceful purposes” as related to the use of the 

elements it supplied, in its own manner. For example, any U.S. 

plans to use the laboratories supplied by Europe and Japan have 

to be approved by Europe or Japan, respectively, based on their 

own interpretations of peaceful purposes. 

Sometimes difficult topics need to be finessed with lessthan-precise language—language that is open to interpretation 

or may require future negotiation, but that allows negotiators 

to get beyond an impasse. Such “constructive ambiguity” is not 

original to the ISS agreement, but it is a standard device used to 

bridge otherwise insurmountable divides in many negotiations. 

Barters

Early in ISS negotiations, we knew we would need a way for 

partners to reimburse each other for various goods and services 

required for successful program implementation. Once we 

realized that political processes in various partner states would 

look unfavorably on the transfer of actual funds, we included 

language noting the intent to minimize the exchange of funds 

and permit barters of goods and services.

For example, the European partner required a NASA shuttle 

launch to deliver its Columbus laboratory to the station. In 

return, the European Space Agency financed the development 

and delivery of two station nodes. Europe’s investment gets 

“spent” within European industry, NASA gets two station nodes 

that do not impact ISS budget, and the Columbus laboratory 

gets launched: a win–win situation.

Creating a successful barter network requires partners 

agreeing that they are not established on a “dollar value versus 

dollar value” basis, but on perceived equality of the goods 

and services to be exchanged. Finding barter options within 

a program may not always be possible; therefore, mechanisms 

should be established to allow program-related barters to occur 

outside the program itself.

Bringing in New Partners

One major oversight of the original set of agreements that 

established the SSF cooperation was the lack of a defined 

mechanism for enlarging the partnership. The nature of the 

program made it difficult to accommodate new partners. The 

ISS is a single, integrated facility with finite resources—especially 

volume, power, and crew time. We devised a sharing concept to 

allocate on-orbit elements and the resources among the partners. 

Because of this construct, the ISS is not a program additional 

countries can simply join. 

When Russia was invited to join the partnership, they had 

a number of modifications they wanted to see incorporated into 

the original intergovernmental agreement (IGA). Other partners 

then came forward with additional suggested revisions, at both 

the IGA and memoranda of understanding levels. 

What was originally hoped to be a minimalist exercise 

SOMETIMES DIffICuLT TOPICS NEED TO bE fINESSED WITh LESS-ThAN-PRECISE 

LANGuAGE—LANGuAGE ThAT IS OPEN TO INTERPRETATION OR MAy REquIRE fuTuRE 

NEGOTIATION, buT ThAT ALLOWS NEGOTIATORS TO GET bEyOND AN IMPASSE.

28 | ASK MAGAZINE
became a complete renegotiation that lasted about as long as 

the original negotiation. Planning for new partners should be 

considered in the beginning when embarking on future cooperative 

projects; it could help save time and effort down the line.

Commercialization

Another unexpected evolution in the program involves 

commercialization. The space station agreements expected 

and provided for commercial use, with partners assuming such 

activities would require ISS research capabilities in microgravity—

such as medical and manufacturing research that would benefit 

from advances in crystal growth and fluid physics. However, the 

commercial interests have been quite different and have included 

advertising and sponsorship, space tourism, and other areas 

unrelated to the station’s research capacity. 

This has led to another dilemma. Should each partner permit 

such commercialization according to its own rules, or is there merit 

in a common set of guidelines? Another question is whether the ISS 

can be marketed as a “brand,” similar to the way the Olympics have 

a recognized brand that can be marketed by different companies in 

return for a fee under an established set of rules. 

Russia has filmed commercials onboard the station and 

has a program to fly paying customers, private citizens who 

can afford such an opportunity. Another opportunity under 

discussion includes a visit to the ISS as a prize for the winner of 

a contest. Is this legitimate commercialization, or inappropriate 

exploitation of a government-funded facility? 

The partners have agreed to discuss common guidelines 

for commercialization but have not yet reached closure on 

this matter. When discussing commercial opportunities 

for future projects, consider that opportunities outside 

the box might appear and include a plan to address them.

Looking to the Future

It is optimistic to think one could craft the perfect agreement 

to flexibly accommodate all contingencies. However, the 

political decision-makers who approve large investments need 

to understand and commit to specific program elements or 

goals. Establishing key parameters is important, but so is 

including flexibility in such areas as evolution of the program 

and the addition of partners. Future changes and requirements 

are not easily predicted, so establish flexibility by defining a 

process to address downstream changes rather than trying to 

craft language for every possible new development. Below are 

some additional elements future negotiators may wish to keep 

in mind: 

• D etermining the overarching agreement structure is 

important. Should it be thoroughly multilateral or would 

bilateral approaches be more advantageous?

• Giving all partners a voice should be recognized and 

incorporated in the decision hierarchy, but the need to 

avoid decision deadlock, especially on operational matters, 

must also be taken into account.

• E stablishing a means for other nations to accede to the 

agreement, apply for membership, or be sponsored by an 

original partner should also be considered. Non-partner 

participation could prove crucial for involving nations that 

are not major space powers but who wish to be involved in 

large-scale human spaceflight programs. 

• Determining a financial contribution system is also 

important. Unless defined contributions from the outset 

are considered the complete “deal,” bartering to offset 

financial obligations can play an important role.

And it’s important to keep in mind that, regardless of best 

intentions, some aspects may have to be renegotiated. 

Whether you’re establishing agreements or renegotiating, 

approach matters with an open mind. It’s impossible to identify 

every contingency in advance, but including “flexibility” in 

future cooperative agreements can help large programs adapt 

and thrive. ●

Japan Aerospace Exploration 

Agency astronaut Aki Hoshide, 

Expedition 32 flight engineer, uses 

a digital still camera to expose a 

photo of his helmet visor during 

the mission’s third session of 

extravehicular activity. ASA: Ntidero CtohP

ASK MAGAZINE | 29
BY MELISSA PANDIKA

Tucked in the northeastern corner of California, Surprise Valley is set amid a high desert landscape 

dotted with hot springs and dry lakebeds. During the first two weeks of September 2012, a team 

of scientists and engineers collected magnetic data using ground surveys and an unmanned aerial 

system, or UAS, to map the geophysics of Surprise Valley, revealing features buried below the surface. 

30 | ASK MAGAZINE | story
Although some faults and fractures are visible, some remain 

hidden underground. And even when researchers know where 

hot springs are located, they want to understand how fluids flow 

through the network of underground pores and channels. 

Investigating this geothermal fluid-circulation system 

includes identifying faults below the surface that might conduct 

the hot mixture of fluids and minerals found in the hot springs. 

These faults also have the potential to rupture during an 

earthquake. The detailed studies will help refine predictions 

of how likely and how damaging earthquakes could be in

the region.

 The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)-led, NASA-funded 

project, which includes a second field session scheduled for next 

year, will produce a 3-D map that provides geophysical data at a 

level of detail yet to be achieved for the area. The Surprise Valley 

community and municipal government can also use the map 

to inform land and water use decisions, since toxic water zones 

have been identified, as well to help tap the geothermal system 

as a sustainable energy source. 

 The team includes scientists and engineers from USGS, 

Ames Research Center, Central Washington University, and 

Carnegie Mellon University. Over the years, they’ve collected 

a wealth of magnetic data by foot and using small all-terrain 

vehicles. But the areas they can safely survey on the ground are 

limited. They can’t walk through private lands, dense vegetation, 

or hot springs, for example. 

Geoscientists have typically addressed this challenge by 

hiring pilots to collect data along a specified flight path. Not 

only are these manned aerial surveys costly, they require pilots 

to fly at dangerously low altitudes. That’s why the Surprise 

Valley team has collected data with a small, lightweight UAS 

known as SIERRA (Sensor Integrated Environmental Remote 

Research Aircraft). While flying along a preprogrammed 

path, the NASA-developed SIERRA relays data collected by a 

magnetometer in its wing to a ground-station computer.

Smoothing out the Kinks

The first day of an expedition is typically the most hectic.

The Surprise Valley team encountered its fair share of issues

to troubleshoot. 

After the first flight, the wireless communication system 

set up to download the flight parameter and magnetic data 

from SIERRA malfunctioned. The team had earlier discussed 

transferring data directly through a network cable, but with the 

wireless system, the engineers could avoid directly accessing the 

aircraft’s sensitive instruments. It turned out the wireless system 

could not withstand SIERRA’s vibrations during the flight test. 

With the wireless system down, the payload team developed a 

workaround that required the aircraft to be physically tethered 

to the ground station to download data after each flight.

Meanwhile, the compensation data from SIERRA’s fluxgate 

magnetometer, which takes into account variations in magnetic 

fields and their direction, yielded highly unusual results. The 

data from a test of the fluxgate when it was first installed looked 

reasonable to the team, with variations not far from expected 

values. They noticed some anomalies, which they believed they 

could solve only by recalibrating the instrument or remounting it 

away from magnetic noise, either of which would be prohibitively 

expensive. The researchers hoped the remoteness of Surprise 

Valley, away from steel-framed buildings, electric lines, and other 

magnetic sources, would enable them to perform more precise 

calibrations to correct for aircraft-related noise. 

At the end of the day, the science group—USGS 

geophysicist and project lead scientist Jonathan Glen, Ames 

researcher and project lead scientist Corey Ippolito, Carnegie 

Mellon University researcher Ritchie Lee, and Geometrics 

engineer Misha Tchernychev—spent hours poring over the 

compensation data, trying to pinpoint the source of the anomalies. 

Then an idea occurred to them: maybe the problem was limited 

only to the fluxgate and not dependent on the aircraft, which 

they could confirm by examining just the fluxgate in the house. 

If working properly, the fluxgate’s measurements should closely 

reflect Earth’s magnetic field, a known value. If they didn’t, then 

the problem must be due to the fluxgate itself. 

The SIERRA crew removed the fluxgate magnetometer 

instrument from the aircraft and provided it to the science 

group, who took it home for a long night of troubleshooting. 

The science group camped out with the fluxgate 

magnetometer in the dining room, exhausted yet still talking 

and joking animatedly. After a few hours, the team discovered 

that the fluxgate could collect data in two modes—calibrated 

or raw. The fluxgate was currently in calibrated mode. When 

the team took measurements in this mode, they saw magnetic 

field values far from those of Earth. When they switched the 

instrument to raw mode, they saw the values they expected. 

Clearly the fluxgate’s calibration needed fixing. 

valley of Surprises

Another engineer from Geometrics said he could provide them 

with a new, properly calibrated fluxgate. He agreed to drop 

ASK MAGAZINE | 31
it off at a halfway point, in Redding. Meanwhile, Misha and 

Jonathan would determine the correct calibration themselves by 

recording the magnetic field strength and direction the fluxgate 

magnetometer measured as they moved it through a series of 

maneuvers. This would yield the mathematical relationship 

between the raw and improperly calibrated versions of the 

data, allowing them to convert yesterday’s data to raw data. 

The measurements would also enable Jonathan and Misha to 

determine the correct calibration, which they could then apply 

to the raw data from the first flight day.

They spent the entire morning on the front lawn, one 

maneuvering the instrument while the other jotted down 

instrument readings on a sheet of paper. Misha then fed the 

readings into a computer program to generate an equation 

reflecting the relationship between the raw and incorrectly 

calibrated versions of the data. He then applied the equation to 

the data from the first flight. 

The resulting raw data appeared as a magnetic map, 

showing an array of colors from bright pink to deep 

purple, reflecting positive and negative magnetic anomalies, 

respectively, resulting from magnetic sources below the surface.

Jonathan pored over the map displayed on the laptop 

throughout the afternoon, every now and then gathering 

the other USGS researchers around his screen. Meanwhile, 

Misha holed up at Cedarville Airport, calculating the correct 

calibration from the maneuvers earlier. He returned a few 

hours later with the correct calibration applied to the raw

data. While the magnetic map based on the raw data was 

mostly clear, the edges appeared blurry. When Misha applied the 

correct calibration, the resolution of the map image improved 

significantly. Because the entire feature was completely buried, 

the team wouldn’t have known about it without geophysical 

mapping. The airborne data provided uniform spatial-data 

coverage, allowing them to map the feature in fine detail.

Looking at the data, Jonathan spotted a magnetic anomaly 

continuing along the same direction as an anomaly he and 

Geometrics engineer Misha Tchernychev displays 

a magnetic map of the 30-km magnetic anomaly 

based on raw data before applying the correct 

fluxgate calibration. While the edges of this image 

appear blurry, when Misha applied the correct 

calibration, its resolution improved significantly. 

aiknda Pasisle M:tide CrothoP

32 | ASK MAGAZINE
Anne Egger of Central Washington University had mapped 

when they performed a previous ground-based survey of the 

area. So far, the data hints that the feature may represent a 

single structure, but the team can’t draw any conclusions before 

SIERRA completes the map. 

Knowing whether or not the feature is continuous is 

important, since the magnitude of an earthquake that can occur 

along a fault is determined primarily by its length. The longer 

the fault, the larger the earthquake it causes when it ruptures. A 

continuous fault also means a continuous channel for geothermal 

fluids, a dangerous scenario, since a hazardous groundwater zone 

high in mineral content sits in the middle of the feature. Knowing 

the feature’s structure will help refine predictions of how likely 

and how damaging earthquakes could be in the region.

 As Jonathan continued to navigate through the data, two 

USGS researchers returned with the new fluxgate, which they 

handed off to the NASA engineers. That evening, they installed 

the instrument so SIERRA could fly first thing in the morning.

How a Radio Transmitter Is Like a Funnel

The next day the team felt confident that SIERRA would have a 

successful flight. But within minutes of takeoff, SIERRA began 

slowly losing magnetic data. The rate of data loss climbed until the 

ground base station completely lost the signal from the fluxgate. 

Puzzlingly, the UAS had no problem transmitting the 

fluxgate data while the aircraft was grounded. The team probed 

the scientific instrumentation for loose cables that might 

be preventing transmission, conducted an inspection of the 

aircraft installation, and analyzed the instrument data logs that 

were recorded during the aborted flight test. Though glassyeyed, they sounded upbeat as they discussed the issue among 

themselves, feeling the solution just within reach.

The team’s analysis showed that the replacement fluxgate 

magnetometer was sending messages at a much higher rate 

than expected. Eventually, they deduced that the new fluxgate 

magnetometer instrument was misconfigured in the field for 

the flight test; it was configured to record samples at a much 

DESPITE ThE TEChNICAL 

huRDLES, SIERRA NOT ONLy 

COMPLETED ITS MISSION ONE 

DAy EARLy, IT COLLECTED 

ExTRA DATA fROM A LARGELy 

uNExPLORED REGION, 

ACCELERATING ThE TEAM’S 

uNDERSTANDING Of ThE 

GEOPhySICS Of ThE vALLEy.

Project co-principal investigator Jonathan Glen (lower left) with NASA and 

Geometrics engineers, troubleshooting SIERRA’s malfunctioned wireless 

system. With the wireless system down, the payload team developed 

a workaround that requires the aircraft to be physically tethered to the 

ground station to download the data after each flight.

aiknda Pasisle M:tide CrothoP

ASK MAGAZINE | 33
higher rate than it could transmit to the rest of the data system 

in real time. 

SIERRA crew engineer Ric Kolyer likened the issue to 

pouring water through a funnel. The amount of water that can 

flow through a funnel is limited by the size of the funnel hole. 

If water is poured into the funnel faster than the funnel can 

drain it, the funnel will overflow. Likewise, the fluxgate was 

sending data to the radio faster than the radio could send it to 

the ground station. The data overflowed, failing to reach the 

ground station. 

The team reasoned that they didn’t have trouble 

communicating with SIERRA when it was grounded because 

they hadn’t allowed it to run long enough. Using Ric’s analogy, 

water initially flows through a funnel even when it’s poured too 

quickly. Only after the funnel is filled does it start overflowing. 

Likewise, while SIERRA was aloft, the team initially saw 

magnetic data being transmitted via the radio link. They didn’t 

begin losing data until several minutes later. 

Having pinpointed the problem, the team reconfigured the 

fluxgate magnetometer’s sampling rate, enabling it to sustain 

communication with the ground base station. SIERRA was 

ready to fly again.

“Are We Really Done?”

The next morning, SIERRA flew smoothly through its survey 

of the north central detailed region and perimeter of Surprise 

Valley. With time to spare, SIERRA lead engineer Randy 

Berthold agreed to USGS researchers’ requests for a detailed 

survey of a southern region the following day in addition to the 

broad survey across the entire valley they had originally planned. 

Despite the technical hurdles, SIERRA not only completed 

its mission one day early, it collected extra data from a largely 

unexplored region, accelerating the team’s understanding of the 

geophysics of the valley.

“Are we really done? After all that work?” Corey asked on 

SIERRA’s last night in Surprise Valley. “Can’t we just fly the 

plane ten more times?”

On the afternoon of SIERRA’s last flight day, Jonathan 

drove with Central Washington University geologist and 

project lead scientist Anne to the east side of the valley to pick 

up USGS researcher Noah Athens, who had been collecting 

magnetic data by foot. As they stepped out of the car, they 

spotted SIERRA directly overhead.

“It was an amazing moment,” said Anne. “We both realized 

that everything we had been working on for a year and a half 

was working. It was so satisfying, and so remarkable to feel like 

we were in the middle of a success. After all the troubleshooting, 

we really felt good about where we were.” ●

Note: This story was originally published in a series of NASA 

blog entries, which can be found at blogs.nasa.gov/cm/newui/blog/

viewpostlist.jsp?blogname=mission-ames.

akidnaa Pssile: Mtidere CgamI

Magnetic anomaly (red line circled in brown) 

stretching more than 30 km through Surprise 

Valley, which the team detected during previous 

ground-based surveys of the area. They hope 

SIERRA’s surveys will allow them to fill in the 

gaps on their map (arrows).

34 | ASK MAGAZINE
In August 2012, NASA Chief Knowledge Officer and Academy of Program/Project and 

Engineering Leadership Director Ed Hoffman sat down with Hans Mark, from the University 

of Texas at Austin, and NASA’s Jack Boyd at the Ames Research Center as part of the 

Academy’s Masters with Masters series. Dr. Mark has held several roles, including NASA 

deputy administrator, Ames center director, chancellor of the University of Texas, secretary 

and undersecretary of the air force, director of the National Reconnaissance Office, and 

director of research and engineering at the Department of Defense. Jack Boyd has worked at 

Ames for more than sixty years and is the senior advisor to the Ames center director. He has 

been the NASA associate administrator for management, and has also served as the acting 

deputy center director for Ames. 

From Masters with Masters: 

Jack Boyd and Hans Mark

Ames engineers (left to 

right) Allen Faye, Merrill 

Mead, and Jack Boyd 

discuss aircraft design 

and handling.

Photo Credit: NASA/Ames Research Center

InsIght | ASK MAGAZINE | 35
Hoffman: How did you start working together?

Boyd: I got a call from the about-to-be administrator, Jim 

Beggs, saying he had this young fella he wanted me to show 

around Ames. So Hans came and spent a day.

Mark: When I came to Ames in February of 1969, I was 

clueless. The person in the director’s office who taught me how 

to do things is Jack Boyd, because he was Harvey’s executive 

assistant. And then both of us worked for Edie Watson for some 

years, which really got us started. 

Hoffman: You’re both extraordinary leaders. What do you 

think are the characteristics of being an exceptional leader? 

Mark: I think the critical thing is the creation of an atmosphere 

where people can develop themselves and things can happen. 

Occasionally, I like the term “management by exception”—that 

is, you manage when you think something is going wrong and 

say, “Okay, we have to do something.” But, by and large, you 

hire people who are smarter than you are, and that works by 

itself. I’ve had that as a principle for sixty years now.

Boyd: I like to look for someone who loves what they are doing. 

Also, and I have done this most of my life, you’ve got to rely 

on other people to get things done. If you don’t get along with 

other people, you’re not going to get things done very well. We 

have a saying at NASA, which I mostly agree with: “Failure is 

not an option.” I think failure is an option in the technology 

world because you’ve got to try new things and sometimes you 

are going to fail, but don’t let that stop you from doing things. 

Don’t give up. 

Hoffman: One of the key aspects of leadership is how effective 

are you in times of transition, crises, and change. Both of you, 

at different points in NASA history, have dealt with that. What 

should NASA be doing today to be able to respond to a time 

where there is a lot of uncertainty?

Mark: Many people sitting in this room today remember the 

crisis we were in in 1969, after we had successfully landed on the 

moon. People began to say, “OK, you’ve done it. What is next?” 

For the next two years, there was a genuine crisis in the sense that 

we were cutting back, and we were doing things that were really 

no longer part of what administrators had in mind. I think that 

we got out of the crisis by changing the emphasis of the center 

from the Apollo program, which we all contributed to, to what we 

were good at. Of course, aeronautics came up first. One of the 

things that Roy Jackson, our boss at the time, did was initiate 

a new experimental aircraft program. In the eight years I was 

here, we developed five or six experimental aircraft. The tiltrotor 

aircraft came out of that. I think that is an example of making a 

change that revived our ability to hire people and to do things. 

Hoffman: Is NASA as comfortable taking risks today as when 

you were providing leadership a few decades ago?

Boyd: I think generally not, but I should say that with some 

hesitation because we just saw one with MSL [Mars Science 

Laboratory], which was one hell of a risky thing to do, and we did 

it successfully. In the NACA [National Advisory Committee for 

Aeronautics] days—remember we were a very small organization—

we weren’t very high on anyone else’s radar screen. So we could do 

what seemed to be dumb things and get away with it. Some of 

those dumb things turned out to be remarkable activities. 

For example, R.T. Jones, who developed the swept-back 

wing that is on every airplane that flies anywhere in the world, 

was not permitted to publish his paper when he first talked 

about it. They thought it seemed like a dumb idea: birds don’t 

have swept-back wings, why should we? Harvey Allen and 

his “blunt body,” which is on every spacecraft that goes into 

planetary atmosphere, we did that here. 

retneh Ccraeses RemA/ASA: Ntidero CtohP

At a farewell party for Dr. Hans Mark, Ames center director from 1969 to 1977, are (left to right) Alan Chambers, Dale Compton, 

Jack Boyd, Hans Mark, Lloyd Jones, and John Dusterberry.

36 | ASK MAGAZINE
I don’t think we’re quite in a mode today of taking those 

kinds of risks, but I am going to say MSL was one heck of risky 

activity, which was wonderfully successful. 

Mark: I would answer your question by saying the biggest risk 

we took programmatically when I was here was to take on the 

development of the first large massively parallel computer, the 

ILLIAC IV, because no one knew how to program the thing. But 

we had Harv Lomax here, we had Dean Chapman, we had R.T. 

Jones, and then we brought in Bill Ballhaus and Paul Kutler and 

Ron Bailey, and a bunch of people that then sat down and made 

the thing work. So what did we do? We hardwired it, basically. 

We didn’t have an operating system or a program, but we showed 

that the parallel computer configuration could do a calculation in 

15 minutes that took the CDC 7600 several days to do. Today, 

every large computer has parallel architecture. I think that had an 

enormous impact, and we started it right here.

Hoffman: What are your thoughts about the vision for NASA? 

What are some of the things that you hope for the future of 

what we’re doing?

Boyd: I’ll quote our Russian friend, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky 

who said, “The earth is a cradle of humankind, but you can’t 

stay in the cradle forever,” so we’ve got to go outside. I think 

Von Braun said, “Let’s do it for the fatherland.” Carl Sagan said, 

“Let’s do it for science.” And a guy named O’Neil, who Hans 

knew quite well and used to come visit us, said, “It is human 

destiny to explore; exploring the solar system is human destiny.” 

That is the way we got to do things. Now, how you go about 

doing it, what processes you use, what steps you take, I’ve got 

my own thoughts about. I’m not sure they are all that relevant 

now, but to go out and do those sort of things require you to be 

a pretty good salesmen, too, in order to get Congress and the 

people of the United States behind us. I wouldn’t give up on any 

of this. If you fail one time, don’t stop. We can’t give up.

Mark: Let me separate aeronautics from space exploration. The 

vision for aeronautics goes back to NACA and was driven by 

the fact that in World War I, the United States did not have 

a single combat aircraft at the front. We were way behind. So 

for a hundred years now, we have been the leading nation in 

aeronautics in the world. Aeronautics today is not quite the 

largest, but almost the largest manufacturing industry that still 

has a very large balance of trade, roughly $75 billion a year give 

or take. So the vision for aeronautics is clear: the United States 

will continue to be the leading nation in aeronautics in the 

world. Period. The end. 

Now, what about space exploration? Aeronautics is done 

because we have a social imperative to do it. We have victory 

in war, and we have the transportation system, and there are 

several million people who have jobs in the aeronautics industry. 

This is one area where NASA should stand up and say, “We 

know how to make jobs!”

 The space industry alone doesn’t employ that many 

people, but there are two issues. One is that the scientific work 

we’ve done in space has become very, very important. You 

know, I’ve heard political folks tell me we don’t really need 

satellites; when you go home today and drive your car, have 

you got GPS in front of you? Most people don’t know where 

it comes from. How many people know that two Nobel Prizes 

have been awarded for work done with NASA spacecraft? 

Riccardo Giacconi got the Nobel Prize for the work he did 

with the Chandrasekhar satellite [Chandra observatory] on 

X-ray astronomy. And John Mather got it for the Cosmic 

Background Explorer for showing that the cosmic background 

is not isotropic. With Earth-orbiting vehicles, we have done 

science that has new, genuinely important information about 

how the universe works. We haven’t done that yet in the 

planetary area, but we should do both. And in the planetary 

area, I think the objective must be very simple; we’re going to 

put people on Mars. You don’t spread it around too much. Just 

say that is the objective.

retneh Ccraeses RemA/ASA: Ntidero CtohP

Quadrant of ILLIAC IV, the first large massively parallel computer, 

with V. Tosti (standing) and S. Kravity.

ASK MAGAZINE | 37
Audience: NASA is working on just a half a cent of the budget 

dollar. How and who do you recommend we send out to Congress 

to get the other half a cent?

Boyd: Engage the young people around the world and in this 

country. This summer we’ve had nine hundred students here at 

Ames, many of whom were foreign nationals. If we could somehow 

harness the power of these young folks who are really enthusiastic 

about what they see when they come to a place like Ames, I think 

that would help us tremendously. 

Mark: The necessary foundation of this place has to be technical 

competence. If you bring a few technically competent people in, 

others will come. In addition to the salesmanship, there has to be 

technical competence. The position of a NASA center director is 

enormously powerful. It’s powerful not because we’re all that good 

at getting money from Washington. It is because we can choose 

people to do the jobs that we know they will do well.

Audience: Where do you see someone with less technical 

experience but with more management experience in NASA 

leadership?

Boyd: I think the management here at Ames recognized some 

time ago that technical excellence alone isn’t going to hack it at 

a research technology center. In the mid-sixties, they said, “OK, 

you’ve done your technical things, now we’re going to send you 

off to the Stanford Sloan Program because we need people who 

understand finance, procurement, what have you.”

I said, “I don’t want to go to the Stanford Sloan Program. 

That’s got to be dull.” 

But I went, and it was probably one of the best experiences 

I had. It helped me understand where other people were coming 

from, too. I think that mix of the technical and engineering 

background, and a business background, is quite useful to me. So 

you need a mix, clearly. 

Mark: I agree. 

Hoffman: One of the things I wanted to get your thoughts 

on is recommendations for people starting their careers. I was 

mentioning a personal story I had to Hans and Jack. The first time 

I met both of these leaders was in 1983 as a graduate co-op student. 

I was doing research into leadership competencies, on how project 

teams perform, at Columbia University. Hans would have social 

events for the different co-ops, interns, and students. I had a friend 

coming up from Columbia, and I said, “Let’s go to the deputy 

administrator of NASA’s party.” 

He said, “No, no, let’s not do that. That’ll be boring.” 

To me, it met the number-one criteria for a graduate student: 

I knew it would provide free food. So I talked my friend into it. 

Leadership was there at the event, and there were about thirty of 

us students, so there was a lot of activity for the first half hour. 

All of a sudden, Dr. Mark gets everyone around him at the 

center of the room. I’m stuffing my face and I hear Hans say, “I 

want to welcome all of you here to this event, particularly the 

students, because you’re the future of us and it’s critical that we 

bring on board the best. I see that we have twenty-nine of you 

who are aerospace engineers, and I know why you’re here. One 

of you is a psychology guy from Columbia, and I have no idea 

what you’re doing here.” 

At this point, I get this ball of sweat right on the back of 

my neck. I know where this is going. Hans says, “Can you 

identify yourself?” 

I say, “I’m Ed Hoffman. I’m from Columbia University.” 

He says, “Well, why are you here?” 

You realize how great of a question that is. You would think 

someone would know why they’re at NASA, but that was the first 

time it really locked in. Why am I here? I said, “I’m here helping 

teams, how they work together, how leaders perform.” 

He says, “Well, I’m a leader. Can you help me become 

more effective?” 

I throw the question back, and I said, “Well, can you give me retneh Ccraeses RemA/ASA: Ntidero CtohP

Ames employee breakfast with Dr. Hans Mark.

38 | ASK MAGAZINE
ASA: Ntidero CtohP

The development of the XV15 tiltrotor research aircraft 

was initiated in 1973 with joint 

army–NASA funding as a “proof 

of concept,” or “technology 

demonstrator” program, with 

two aircraft being built by Bell 

Helicopter Textron in 1977.

I ThINK ThAT MIx Of ThE TEChNICAL 

AND ENGINEERING bACKGROuND, AND

A buSINESS bACKGROuND, IS quITE 

uSEfuL TO ME.

ASK MAGAZINE | 39
an example of an effective leadership practice that you use?” 

He said, “Well, one of the things I like to do is write 

down what are called ‘Hans grams.’ I write down notes on 

little stickies at the end of the day and leave them with my 

management team. Does that make me a good leader?” 

Behind him, he can’t see, but his management staff is 

giving all kinds of signals to tell him why it is not. So I said, 

“Why do you think that’s a good practice; why do you do it?” 

He said, “I communicate with my folks, they know it’s 

a priority, and I know when they first get in in the morning 

they know what I’m expecting.” 

I said, “Well, based on what you’re saying, that sounds like 

a good practice.” 

Thirty minutes later, he invites me to his office with a couple 

of other students, and he’s showing me different awards and 

medals, and he said, “By the way, I’m still totally not sure why 

you’re here, but I liked your answer. You handled that really well.” 

That was when I had an appreciation for being prepared 

and what a testing organization meant, which means you should 

know why you’re at a place. There was a strong community 

then and you could go to these events and meet the leadership, 

and they would test you and ask questions, but mostly interact 

with you. 

What do you recommend for folks who start at NASA, 

or what are your recommendations for young professionals in 

terms of being successful or having a career? 

Boyd: First, find a mentor. Find one or more mentors. 

Hoffman: How do you find a mentor?

Boyd: Most people are really happy to do it. Just talk to people. 

Most of them would be happy to deal with you. Be persistent if 

they’re not. Otherwise, get to know your colleagues as best you 

can. Get to know them because you’re going to work with them 

for the rest of your careers, for the rest of your life sometimes. 

Mark: I teach a freshman course in the aerospace department, 

and at the end of the first and second years I always pick a group 

of people to send to NASA centers. NASA has this scholarship 

for summer jobs. I think that—and this is advice for, I might 

call it, “pre-professional”—the people who have had intern 

positions and co-op positions have no problem finding jobs even 

today in the current environment. So, get with it early, that’s the 

short advice. Do it as soon as you can. 

Hoffman: Who were your mentors?

Boyd: I had three that I remember. Harvey Allen, who was just 

a delightful man and brilliant. R.T. Jones was the one who told 

me when I got here, “Read everything that you can find out. 

We’ll give you six months before we give you a real job to do.” 

Those two and Walter Vincente, who was another giant in 

the 1-by-3-foot supersonic wind tunnel. He was instrumental 

in teaching me how to write. Engineers are notoriously poor 

writers—and not too good at speaking for that matter—but the 

combination of those two, he helped me with. 

Mark: Well, my father was a scientist, so obviously he was 

the number-one mentor. He had a student by the name of 

Edward Teller who became my second mentor. In the area of 

dealing with high-level politics and so on, I would have to say 

that Johnny Foster was my mentor there. We had an associate 

director here named John Foster, but I’m talking about the one 

who was in the nuclear weapons business and then went into 

the Pentagon. John Foster was a good physicist, and he also 

understood management. So I would say those three. 

Hoffman: So the importance of finding a mentor is very 

clear, and also being able to answer the question of why you 

are here is one of the things that I would share. I’ve been here 

twenty-nine years, and this is one of those days I’ll always 

cherish and remember. ●

... I LIKE ThE TERM “MANAGEMENT by ExCEPTION”—ThAT IS, yOu MANAGE 

WhEN yOu ThINK SOMEThING IS GOING WRONG AND SAy, “OKAy, WE hAvE TO 

DO SOMEThING.” buT, by AND LARGE, yOu hIRE PEOPLE WhO ARE SMARTER 

ThAN yOu ARE, AND ThAT WORKS by ITSELf.

40 | ASK MAGAZINE
ASA: Ntidero CtohP

At the Marshall Space Flight Center Mission Operations Laboratory, we provide facilities, systems, 

and ground-systems services to other NASA centers, universities, and research centers and to 

international space agencies. International Space Station (ISS) payload operations are among the 

services we offer at our control center. The payload operations include command and control of 

science payloads aboard the ISS and communicating data from the experiments to organizations in 

the United States and to our international partners.

BY ANGELA MARSH

In the grasp of the International 

Space Station’s Canadarm-2, 

JAXA’s Kounotori-2 H-II 

Transfer Vehicle is moved from 

the space-facing side of the 

Harmony node back to the 

Earth-facing port of Harmony. 

Understanding

Project Management
As mission operations systems manager and co-chair of the 

ISS Ground-Segment Control Board, I’ve become aware of

some of the challenges and subtleties of working successfully 

with our colleagues at the European Space Agency (ESA), the 

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Canadian 

Space Agency, and the Russian Federal Space Agency. I took 

the Academy of Program/Project and Engineering Leadership’s 

International Project Management (IPM) course in February 

2012 in hopes of getting some tools and insights that would help 

us ensure that those international partnerships are as productive 

and effective as possible.

Crisis Response

Normal ISS payload operations are complex to begin with. An 

unforeseen crisis adds to the complexity, and not having a good 

understanding of how international partners operate can make a 

difficult situation even harder to evaluate and manage.

Around midnight on March 10, 2011—the morning of 

March 11 in Japan—our Huntsville Operations Support Center 

ground controller received a call from the ground controller at 

the Space Station Integration and Promotion Center (SSIPC), 

which monitors and commands Kibo, the Japanese experiment 

module, at JAXA’s Tsukuba Space Center. Our log reports that 

the Japanese controller sounded “scared” as he relayed the news 

that the trans-Pacific circuit was down.

The source of the problem, of course, was the undersea 

earthquake and tsunami that caused such devastation in

Japan. The ground systems for Kibo and Japan’s H-II Transfer 

Vehicle (HTV) were damaged, and circuits between SSIPC and 

Johnson Space Center were lost. But the link between SSIPC 

and Marshall remained intact.

Nevertheless, we did not hear from JAXA for two full days 

after that log entry. The IPM course brought clarity to what was 

happening during that time. In a situation like the tsunami, 

people are worried and confused about what to do. Knowing 

the level of management decision required by the Japanese, 

those days were surely spent getting required approvals from line 

management for forward plans. After the course, I could have 

better explained to our ground controllers what was happening 

and told them not to worry as much—that JAXA was taking 

care of business the way they needed to and we would hear from 

them when decisions were approved.

Almost a year later, the IPM course identified the likely 

primary cause of that silence. In Cultures and Organizations, 

the main text for the course, Geert Hofstede discussed the 

relationship between bosses and subordinates and the process 

of making decisions in Japanese organizations. Those two 

days were almost certainly spent in methodical and detailed 

work and team reliance on leaders to make final decisions for 

the group.

On March 13th, the decision was made, and our Japanese 

colleagues requested a change in voice formats. On the 14th, 

voice was re-routed through Marshall. That remained the active 

link until the Johnson circuit was recovered on March 18th.

Learning About our Partners

The IPM course covers cultural challenges, legal concerns, 

and teaming issues likely to be encountered when working 

with international partners. Some of the material is very 

straightforward. Things like being aware of time differences 

and foreign holidays when scheduling meetings and setting 

deadlines are simple but important, both as practical issues and 

as signs of respect and consideration.

There are many additional ways to show respect and begin 

to develop the trust that is essential to working well together, 

from learning greetings and common phrases in partners’ native 

languages to trying local food and drink to subtler social issues 

like the meaning of particular gestures or ways of speaking in a 

given culture.

A lot of these elements are discussed in Hofstede’s book. He 

explains how the cultural characteristics of various countries 

are likely to play out in business transactions and suggests the 

The International Space Station 

Payload Operations Center at 

Marshall Space Flight Center.

42 | ASK MAGAZINE
kinds of adjustments in communications, negotiating styles, 

and expectations that need to be made in various international 

work situations. Speakers at the course supplement his advice 

with information specific to international cooperation in

space—for instance, how different space agencies manage

their projects, and the influence of trade regulations on sharing 

aerospace technologies.

As useful as the information provided by readings and 

presentations is, the most valuable part of the course may be 

the opportunity it provides to meet and work with the foreign 

nationals who are taking it. Interacting with them informally 

and in class activities that involve playing out a multicultural 

project together bring the cultural issues to life and make our 

differences—and our similarities—vividly real. It also helps 

bring language issues to light. 

English is the official language of the ISS, so our

international partners are working in what for them is a foreign 

language. Helping out with translation and taking time to make 

sure that everyone has a common understanding of the subject 

under discussion are essential to avoiding problems. Remaining 

aware that our international colleagues are not native English 

speakers also contributes to our appreciation and admiration—

they speak English so much better than most of us at NASA can 

speak any other language.

Bringing the Lessons Home

The IPM experience gave me the ability and courage to be a 

better mentor to my team and coworkers, making me more 

confident that I could give them useful guidance about working 

with different cultures and countries.

Sensitivity to cultural and organizational differences is

essential to the success of all our ISS work with our partners. 

For example, the alpha magnetic spectrometer Asia Payload 

Operations Center in Taiwan will be responsible for the safe 

operation of the spectrometer for the next ten years. A highlevel university professor who will lead some of that instrument’s 

cosmic-ray research mentioned that he would like to visit or 

send someone to visit Marshall and the Huntsville Operations 

Support Center. This would give each of us insight into how the 

other works.

Business invitations between organizations in the United 

States require an understanding of business etiquette. Business 

invitations between a U.S. organization and a foreign agency 

involve additional layers of understanding and finesse. Thanks 

in part to the IPM course, I was aware of the importance of 

some of the details of this situation: whom the invitation should 

be addressed to, who should send it, what the expectations of 

the visit should be.

ThINGS LIKE bEING AWARE Of TIME 

DIffERENCES AND fOREIGN hOLIDAyS 

WhEN SChEDuLING MEETINGS AND SETTING 

DEADLINES ARE SIMPLE buT IMPORTANT, 

bOTh AS PRACTICAL ISSuES AND AS SIGNS 

Of RESPECT AND CONSIDERATION.

Another example: I recently received an e-mail from one of 

our international partners informing me that he had received an 

e-mail from Marshall security officials requesting information 

about their control center assets. Of course, it didn’t take 

participation in the IPM course for me to know that this was an 

error that had the potential to upset our partners. But the course retnet Chgile Fcapl SlahsraM/ASA: Ntidero CtohP

ASK MAGAZINE | 43
did help me understand how important correcting it forcefully 

and quickly would be to maintaining our relationship of trust 

and cooperation. I immediately sent an e-mail to our partner, 

with copies to our other partner centers, explaining that he was 

not required to send that information and thanking him for 

bringing the request to my attention.

A more far-reaching security issue relates to compliance 

with Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, a mandate 

that requires government agencies to know who is accessing 

government systems and whether they can be trusted not 

to compromise them. Our ISS international partners had a 

hard time understanding and accepting the idea that the U.S. 

government would not recognize their own governments’ 

security credentials.

The IPM course taught that trust is the bottom line of the 

relationships with our international partners and here we were 

basically telling them we didn’t trust their security processes and 

would require them to re-establish their identity using NASA 

credentials. Not wanting to compromise our relationships yet 

needing to comply with the security regulation, we decided to 

redesign our Huntsville Operations Support Center systems 

to authenticate foreign national users using their NASA user 

identities and RSA-token identification credentials. This 

approach still meant we had to convince our partners to load 

a user-identity verification system at their centers, but it would 

require no further effort on their part.

Convincing the international community that their 

systems would not be affected by the additional software took 

many hours of design review, consultation, and training (and 

a promise that there would be no cost to the partners)—and it 

required the trust we were working to preserve. ESA especially 

and understandably took exception to NASA’s unwillingness to 

accept their identity and credential system, and it took all our 

relationship skills to win them over.

In the end, we gained access to our IT systems for the 

365 foreign nationals we work with. Putting ourselves in their 

shoes and making the extra effort to design a system that would 

have as little impact on them as possible helped maintain the 

cooperative, trusting relations we have worked so hard to create.

Trust and Respect

As these examples suggest, trust and respect are key to successful 

international partnerships. That is the underlying lesson of the 

IPM course and of our experience working with our international 

ISS partners. The reliable service and support we have provided 

over the years have gained and kept our partners’ trust and built 

a high level of mutual respect.

We continue to receive regular requests for new system 

designs and services. ESA has recently requested a new ISS

delay-tolerant network. JAXA has asked us to provide Ku-band 

access to their ISS Japanese Experiment Module laboratory. 

Years ago, it would have been hard to carry out this request. 

The language barrier would have been part of the difficulty but 

so would the formality of documentation they required and 

the complexity of their management decision process. Over 

time, though, working together has become significantly easier 

as trust has developed among the personnel at each center. 

Sometimes decisions are made at a lower level than would have 

been possible in the past and with less need for extensive formal 

assurances. This progress makes us smile because we know we 

are being successful at a different level, an international level. ●

AngelA MArsh serves as branch chief for the Marshall 

Space Flight Center Mission Operations Laboratory Mission 

Operations Systems Branch, managing day-to-day operations 

of the Huntsville Operations Support Center, which includes the 

ISS Payload Operations Center and the Fast Affordable Science 

and Technology Satellite Control Center. She also serves as the 

deputy chairman for the ISS Ground-Segment Control Board.

JAXA’s “Kibo” mission 

control room in Tsukuba 

Space Center. Photo Credit: JAXA

As useful As the informAtion provided 

by reAdings And presentAtions is, the 

most vAluAble pArt of the course 

mAy be the opportunity it provides 

to meet And work with the foreign 

nAtionAls who Are tAking it.

44 | Ask mAgAZine
The ability to plan one’s career path can be a strong force for morale and fulfillment in the workplace. 

The need for a clear career path has been recognized for many years at Goddard Space Flight 

Center. In fact, Goddard’s Applied Engineering and Technology Directorate (AETD) began to 

plan a career-path tool approximately four years ago. 

Building the Goddard

Career-Path Tool

 BY DAvID WILHELM, NANCY LINDSEY, MARIA SO, NICHOLE PINKNEY, AND NANCY RACKLEY 

InsIght | ASK MAGAZINE | 45
46 | ASK MAGAZINE

The idea was simple: build a career-path “map” that would be 

easy for employees to use. The design would be similar to the 

map used by the Washington, D.C., Metro subway system, 

since most people are familiar with metro or bus-mapping 

pamphlets. The various metro or bus routes would be career 

“ladders” that would give employees a way to lay out their future 

career development.

Due to other urgent demands, the AETD career-path 

project was temporarily set aside; but Goddard leader Maria So 

never abandoned the vision of an easy-to-use career-path tool.

Fast-forward several years. So was promoted to the position 

of deputy director of the Safety and Mission Assurance 

Directorate (SMA). With an eye toward building organizational 

strength for the SMA Directorate and considering morale and 

retention, as well as recruitment of engineers, scientists, and 

administrative support positions, she decided to revisit the idea 

of the career-path “Metro Map.” 

Building a new system is nothing new to an engineer 

like So, but her vision for success included a desire for strong 

collaboration and joint leadership with another important 

stakeholder, Verron “Ron” Brade, the director of Goddard’s 

Office of Human Capital Management (OHCM). After 

obtaining support from her manager, Judy Bruner, director of 

Goddard’s SMA Directorate, So asked Brade to collaborate in 

building a career path for the SMA Directorate. The project 

aligned with his strategy of transforming OHCM into a 

collaborative, valuable partner for its customers, so he readily 

agreed. They assembled a team that included Nichole Pinkney, 

chief of OHCM’s Talent Cultivation Office; Nancy Lindsey, 

mission systems senior reliability manager; and David Wilhelm, 

senior human resources consultant.

From the outset, So’s vision for the career-path tool included 

defined paths or “ladders” for each discipline. In addition, the 

application needed to be web accessible, allowing employees 

to view career-path information and see the different potential 

paths for their positions. Like other organizations at Goddard, 

the SMA Directorate is composed of several disciplines, and 

employees often did not know what training or experience 

they would need to be promoted, to move laterally into a new 

position, or to transition to another discipline.

Pinkney immediately saw the possibility of implementing 

a career-path system not only for SMA, but for all Goddard 

organizations. She realized that a centerwide career-path 

system could provide an overview of opportunities for growth 

and development, including discipline transition possibilities 

for center employees. It could also assist in identifying 

competencies and skills that are natural “feeders” to building 

the leadership team. 

With this vision in mind, Pinkney agreed to a modest 

budget to hire a small business contractor to quickly build a 

prototype system for SMA. She realized that capturing the right 

data was vital to the usefulness of this system. She made sure 

that Wilhelm, as senior human resources consultant, would have 

sufficient involvement in this groundbreaking project, since 

he had tremendous insight into human-capital development. 

He drafted a set of insightful questions to ask SMA managers 

so the appropriate training data for all disciplines would be 

captured. He conducted all the interviews along with the SMA 

implementation team and guided the data-capture process. 

Once the initial data was validated by SMA management, 

Wilhelm conducted a review and validation with the other 

OHCM disciplines. 

Understanding the goals defined by So and Pinkney, Lindsey 

took on the task of implementation management. With many 

years of experience in program management and requirement 

development, and a software development background, she had 

the knowledge needed to manage the project and to understand 

the expertise needed to ensure success. She built a team with 

the necessary diverse skills, including Wilhelm; B-Line Express, 

the small business contractor that has provided experienced 

design and Internet application development since 1995; and 

SMA managers, who provided raw career data and validated its 

incorporation in the SMA career-path web site. 

Project sponsors provided guidance and offered suggestions 

during the design phase of the project and during debriefing 

meetings while giving the team the freedom to meet the 

challenge of developing a creative career-path tool. When 

confronted with a challenge, the development team frequently 

charted possible solutions in writing so they could collectively 

consider each other’s ideas. 

One such challenge was to show the user the option to 

transition between the ten unique SMA technical positions 

at seven grade levels without creating a visually confusing 

and intimidating “spaghetti” of transition lines. The team 

used the human-capital interview data-gathering process and 

storyboarding to resolve this issue. 

Interviews showed and human-capital management verified 

that promotional transitions from level to level were consistent 

within disciplines and provided in the standard career paths 

within each discipline. So only information about transitions 

between disciplines was needed. The team then storyboarded 

and whiteboarded several concepts, walking through each user 
ASK MAGAZINE | 47

click. A textual list within the discipline description window 

and a graphical representation of transition options by grade/

discipline proved to be the solution that supported the goal 

of transmitting consistent data to the user without creating a 

confusing image of many paths.

The same process was used to solve the similar challenge of 

showing the user how to transition from technical to supervisory 

responsibilities. Having a team that represented both the 

engineering side and the human-capital side of the business added 

efficiency and depth to the process of making design decisions. 

B-Line Express was given the challenge of building 

an application that embodied the goals and objectives of 

the original vision. The company collaborated closely and 

frequently with Lindsey and Wilhelm to develop the web-based 

design concepts and ideas for how best to provide career-path 

guidance and strategic planning for the workforce. The team 

used storyboarding extensively to turn ideas discussed in their 

many team meetings into web-based application design. This 

iterative process was a fast and effective way to develop the 

application and keep it faithful to the vision that So and the 

team had formulated. 

The B-Line development team, led by project manager 

Nancy Rackley, included a graphic designer, a web-application 

developer, and a database engineer—all essential skills. 

Because of B-Line’s experience with comparable applications, 

the team was able to incorporate a variety of cutting-edge web 

technologies that ensured a robust user interface, and provided 

these capabilities quickly and at low cost. The B-Line team also 

took advantage of numerous collaboration tools to implement 

the application while maximizing autonomy for innovation, 

which was essential for the geographically distributed team. This 

helped greatly with software configuration management during 

development and with communication among team members. 

The result of the collaborative effort is a fully functional 

career-path application that was designed, developed, and 

populated with data from four different people with varied skills 

and backgrounds in only six months. The benefits for Goddard 

employees that resulted from this collaboration include career 

planning, training and development planning, and a positive 

effect on morale. The response from Goddard employees who 

have accessed the tool has been extremely positive and mirrors 

the expectations of the development team. 

“The career path is so easy to use and so helpful,” noted an 

SMA employee. 

“For the first time I can actually see in front of me how 

the SMA Directorate is structured by position, and more 

importantly, by the ‘paths,’” noted another employee. 

One employee from OHCM said, “I can see how the 

career path will help me build my IDP [individual development 

plan] and prepare me for my performance and development 

discussions with my supervisor.” 

According to Diversity News and Views, a recent survey 

indicated that roughly 54 percent of workers say knowing their 

career path is very important to their overall job satisfaction, 

nearly as important as compensation. The career path benefits 

Goddard management by providing a tool for succession 

planning (leadership development), assisting supervisors 

with employee career-development discussions, providing a 

positive effect on retention and recruitment, enhancing crossorganizational integration, and strengthening critical links 

between various center functions.

The career-path project is one in which all parties chose to 

cooperate to accomplish a shared outcome. So, Pinkney, Lindsey, 

and Wilhelm are all collaborative leaders in this project. Each of 

them accepted ad hoc responsibility for building an innovative 

career-path system that was developed in a cost-effective 

manner. Together they accomplished the shared purpose of 

providing career-building data to employees that will help them 

more easily take charge of their career. Along the way, the four 

of them established a process and a positive environment that 

supports the collaborative relationship between the SMA and 

OHCM organizations at Goddard. ●

Goddard Space Flight Center. 
Project Knowledge in the

Mo

BY BARBARA FILLIP

ent

NASA’s current Spaceflight Program and Project Management Requirements document, 

NPR 7120.5E, requires projects to develop lessons-learned plans. To help projects and programs 

comply with this new requirement and with NPR 7120.6–Lessons Learned, Goddard’s Office 

of the Chief Knowledge Officer (OCKO) created a framework that involves embedding existing 

knowledge management practices—such as Pause and Learn sessions, case studies, and workshops—

within project plans. Carrying out these activities during projects—in the moment—helps ensure 

that memories of events are fresh and the lessons they provide can be put to use immediately. 

The first and primary beneficiary of any lessons-learned activity should be the project team itself, 

but these activities also support learning across projects. 

48 | ASK MAGAZINE | story
ecpaosre All Ba:tide CrothoP

The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) and 

Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS-1) missions are two Goddard 

projects currently trying to capture important lessons in the 

moment. JPSS-1 will be carrying the same instruments as 

Suomi NPP—and will be a near clone of NPP—so it has the 

potential to learn much from its predecessor satellite.

Capitalizing on an upcoming quarterly meeting of the 

JPSS-1 project in March 2012, Bryan Fafaul, the project 

manager for JPSS-1, proposed using the opportunity to engage 

the Suomi NPP and JPSS-1 teams in a knowledge-sharing 

exercise. The timing was perfect as Fafaul’s team was moving 

forward with the JPSS-1 satellite development and the Suomi 

NPP team had recently completed a successful launch. 

Pause and Learn

The foundational element of project learning is Pause and Learn, 

or PaL, which is a group-reflection activity to ensure that lessons 

are learned within the project. It is also an open conversation—

an opportunity for anyone on the team to articulate insights 

about the work. 

Participants can be a little anxious about how these opendiscussion sessions will turn out, so it’s important to have a 

facilitator who is aware of issues that need to be handled delicately 

and can deflect inappropriate comments that might derail the 

conversation. Once the conversation starts, getting participants 

to contribute their thoughts is never a problem. The key, 

however, is for a facilitator to guide participants to a productive 

conversation—one that allows everyone present to add value to 

the conversation and enhance the group’s understanding of the 

issues at hand. Creating an open and trusting atmosphere in 

which team members can communicate freely is essential for 

capturing lessons learned and sharing knowledge effectively.

If participants walk into a meeting with divergent views 

of a particular event, they may not come out of a PaL session 

with a consensus, but they will at least understand that other 

team members, seeing the same event from another perspective, 

came up with different interpretations of the event and different 

conclusions regarding a lesson. When team members are 

focused on detailed technical lessons, the facilitator’s role can 

be to connect that detail to a broader lesson or theme, such as 

proper planning or effective communication. 

By conducting PaL sessions systematically after key project 

milestones, a project ensures it is taking the time during the 

project to reflect on what has happened—and perhaps even 

make mid-course adjustments—and is keeping track of insights 

gained at different stages of the project life cycle. There are 

multiple benefits to keeping track of insights as they occur. 

Trying to cover all the lessons of a project’s entire life cycle 

would likely be unmanageable. Focusing on a reasonably short 

period of time (a phase, for example) makes more sense. Also, 

our memories are fallible. A project team’s analysis at the end of 

a project would most likely neglect or misremember important 

events and learnings from early phases of the project. 

Learning from a Sister Mission

The sessions that gave the Suomi NPP team an opportunity to 

reflect on what they had learned were a tremendous boon to JPSS-1.

“We were very lucky to have had Suomi NPP just complete 

a successful launch, commissioning, and hand-over to the JPSS 

program,” Fafaul said. “As such, I really wanted to capture as 

much of their experience as possible for my team as we move 

forward with JPSS-1 satellite development. With that said, 

we leveraged three critical areas: satellite integration and test; 

the launch campaign; and commissioning for the JPSS flightproject Pause and Learn sessions.”

Fafaul sought the assistance of the OCKO to help plan and 

implement the sessions. Ed Rogers, Goddard’s chief knowledge 

officer, facilitated the sessions. To make the PaL sessions 

manageable, participants were divided between Suomi NPP staff 

(inner table) and JPSS-1 staff (outer ring). NPP participants were 

asked to prepare talking points before the session about what went 

well on their project and what could be improved. The JPSS-1 

project management team gathered all the input and shared it 

with the OCKO team in advance of the PaL. This helped ensure 

the PaL was tailored to JPSS-1’s knowledge needs and offered 

opportunities for targeted knowledge-sharing activities. 

“JPSS is a unique project in that we are currently building 

a near clone of Suomi NPP for JPSS-1 that includes the same 

instrument suite as Suomi NPP, and we are responsible for 

developing the JPSS-2 satellite,” said Fafaul. “It is critical that 

The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite at the Ball 

Aerospace facility. The Joint Polar Satellite System will be a near clone of NPP.

ASK MAGAZINE | 49
we glean as much from the on-orbit performance of the Suomi 

NPP satellite as possible to ensure we do the right things for 

JPSS-1 and JPSS-2. Our lessons learned demand us to look back 

(NPP); look down (JPSS-1); and look forward (JPSS-2) so that 

we can effectively communicate. And there is no better way to 

do that than through regular Pause and Learn sessions.”

When discussing the launch campaign, the NPP team 

noted how the countdown simulations had proven very valuable 

in preparing for the actual countdown. This was an example of 

something the JPSS-1 team should try to emulate. In the same 

conversation about the launch campaign, the NPP team noted 

that the work environment at the launch site was very different 

from what the team members were used to, and they weren’t 

necessarily ready for it. Launch-site activities require very precise 

execution of a well-thought-out plan. The lesson, in simple 

terms, was “don’t wait to get there to figure out what needs to 

be done. Figure out who will be doing what and when ahead 

of time.” This also implies developing a good understanding 

of roles and responsibilities during the launch campaign and 

building relationships with launch-site partners ahead of time. 

Knowing this, the JPSS-1 team will be more likely to give more 

attention to preparations for launch activities. 

Another issue was contamination, which affected NPP both in 

the integration and testing phase and at the launch site. The existence 

of multiple contamination-mitigation plans led to confusion, lastminute changes, and some instances of contamination that could 

have been avoided. Based on the PaL conversation around this 

issue, the JPSS-1 team is developing a strong contaminationmitigation plan owned by government contamination control 

that will leverage specific lessons learned by NPP. 

Aggregating Knowledge

PaL sessions are just the initial steps of the JPSS-1 lessonslearned plan. Beyond the immediate needs of the JPSS

program, relevant lessons will be shared within the Flight 

Project Directorate’s Knowledge Exchange. The Knowledge 

Exchange is a knowledge-sharing hub based on SharePoint that 

now includes a collection of conversation maps,1

 which are a key 

output of every PaL session. A conversation map is a graphic 

representation of the conversation that took place during a PaL, 

highlighting key insights that emerged from the conversation. 

They serve as a visual reminder of past conversations and are 

always available to the project team and can be used to identify 

actions to be taken in the future. 

The Knowledge Exchange is not simply a collection of 

individual project-specific maps. Insights emerging from 

conversation maps can be aggregated across projects. Looking at 

multiple conversation maps from multiple projects often reveals 

patterns that suggest broadly applicable lessons. 

Not surprisingly, most PaLs will come across team 

communication issues. Aggregating insights related to a specific 

topic (in this case, team communication) in a separate map 

allows for valuable knowledge to emerge and provides a means 

for sharing insights across projects. The process generates 

a knowledge web made up of conversation maps based on 

project-specific information, and topic maps based on insights 

aggregated across projects. When a team conducts a second or 

third PaL, it can use conversation maps created from previous 

sessions as a starting point. The maps can also facilitate writing 

official lessons learned at the end of the project to meet NASA 

requirements. When appropriate, key lessons are submitted for 

formal inclusion in the agency’s Lessons Learned Information 

System in compliance with NPR 7120.6. 

During the subsequent quarterly meeting of the JPSS-1 

project, Fafaul allocated an hour of the agenda to talking about 

ongoing project-learning activities and Rogers facilitated a short 

scenario-based discussion focused on organizational silence. 

Now the JPSS program is adopting the PaL process as well, and 

conducted its first PaL on September 12, 2012. As more projects 

adopt the PaL process as the core project-learning activity of 

their lessons-learned plan, more conversation maps will be 

generated, enabling the creation of a rich web of knowledge 

within the Flight Project Directorate’s Knowledge Exchange. ●

BarBara FilliP is a knowledge management specialist in 

the Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer at Goddard Space 

Flight Center. She came to Goddard as a contractor with Library 

Associates Companies in May 2008 after spending more than 

ten years working in the field of international development, 

occupying functions encompassing program and project

evaluation, information and communication technologies for 

knowledge sharing, as well as capacity building and training.

ecpaosre All Ba:tide CrothoP

1. Most of the current maps (100+) were developed based on case studies and other existing lessons-learned materials 

rather than Pause and Learn sessions. Most future maps will be created based on Pause and Learn sessions.

Electromagnetic-interference testing of the 

NPP satellite at the Ball Aerospace facility.

50 | ASK MAGAZINE
Getting the Most 

from Your Mentor

BY RICHARD McDERMOTT

Mentoring has a long tradition at NASA. To explore how to 

get the most out of a mentor–protégé relationship, I spoke 

with several NASA veterans, including Chief Engineer Mike 

Ryschkewitsch and Liz Citrin, deputy associate director of the 

Joint Polar Satellite System program, with executive coach Diane 

Brennan and with a handful of their protégés. All have been both 

mentors and protégés. As Goddard Chief Engineer Steve Scott 

said, “NASA is really a learning organization and mentors are 

the key that unlocks the door.” 

Mentoring at NASA takes various forms. Technical 

and management development programs, such as 

the Systems Engineering Leadership Development 

Program (SELDP), encourage mentoring as part of the 

program. Terry Nienaber’s supervisor, Pete Spidaliere 

(mission systems engineer for the Magnetospheric 

Multiscale mission), was also his formal SELDP mentor. 

The relationship was very close, as Spidaliere guided 

Nienaber, of Langley’s Mechanical Systems Branch, 

during the transition to a new role, a new project, and an 

unfamiliar NASA center—Goddard—for the yearlong 

program. Nienaber recounts that Spidaliere even gave 

him a “good-natured shove into paying more attention 

to my health, nearly dragging me to the gym.” But formal 

programs account for only a portion of mentoring. Much, 

perhaps most, mentoring at NASA is an informal match-up 

between a protégé and a manager or expert.

Mentoring spans three dimensions of work at NASA: 

technical, managerial, and career. All the mentors I spoke 

with understand that mentoring is a whole-person activity. 

Whatever their specific focus, mentor and protégé discussions 

touched all three dimensions. So when you are choosing or 

working with a mentor, consider the implications for technical, 

managerial, and career issues. 

InsIght | ASK MAGAZINE | 51
Given NASA’s wide diversity of disciplines, capabilities, 

centers, and personnel, you’ll need to develop a work style that 

can accommodate differences and build collaboration. Citrin 

had a protégé who thought his position gave him the authority 

to do what he wanted. She guided him to a more inclusive and 

collaborative work style. 

To develop this combination of very different skills, NASA 

staff frequently have numerous mentors during their career, 

and sometimes two or three at once, each focusing on different 

aspects of skill building and career development. 

Finding a Mentor 

You can take the initiative to find a mentor. Ask your supervisor, 

current or previous mentors, managers, or colleagues who have 

experience in the kind of challenges you are facing. Nienaber 

said he looks for “people that impress me with how they handle 

things in which I’m weak.” 

Making the Mentor Relationship Work

Define Your Intent 

This is simple but important and easy to forget. Find mentors 

who either address your weak spots or deepen a strength, and 

focus the discussion on those cutting edges. In the NASA 

environment, depth and breadth are both critical to develop 

technical and managerial expertise. As your relationship evolves, 

keep an eye on your intent, shift it as appropriate, but don’t just 

let the conversations drift.

Find the Right Mentor 

As in any relationship, mentor and protégé need to click. There is 

no reason to believe that someone with the right technical skills 

will be the right mentor for you. Citrin pointed out that many 

different personal or management styles work in NASA. You don’t 

need to and may not be able to change your core management 

style. So find a mentor who can give you good, frank feedback 

but still work with you as you are, rather than try to turn you 

into someone else. As you discuss your intent, listen for how they 

can help you. If their advice isn’t helpful, you’re free to end the 

relationship without any negative reflection on you or the mentor. 

Keep Mentors That Work 

Getting a new mentor does not mean you need to end current 

mentor relationships. Despite the fact that Goddard’s Richard 

Barney has had numerous technical and management mentors 

during his career, he still turns to Tom Magner, the mentor he 

was assigned on his first day more than thirty years ago. At a 

given time, you may have several mentor relationships.

Take the Lead

Bring questions to discuss, manage your meeting time, ask 

to shadow your mentor to meetings, draw insights from your 

mentor, and follow up. One of Felicia Jones-Selden’s protégés 

e-mails her topics the day before a meeting and Jones-Selden, 

deputy director of the Applied Engineering and Technology 

Directorate, routinely brings protégés to meetings so they can 

talk about the issues afterward. Taking the lead makes the 

mentor–protégé relationship more of a partnership. As she 

notes, it should bring out the best in both of you. Brennan notes, 

“Mentors are people we respect and aspire to emulate. This 

can create feelings of intimidation and fear. It’s important to 

recognize this dynamic and to shift it to a mind-set of curiosity 

and learning.”

Make It Easy for the Mentor

Mentors, like everyone else at NASA, have more to do than they 

can fit into the day. It’s tempting to meet in the mentor’s office, 

but that often means disruptions that make deep discussion 

impossible. Find a time and place that are conducive to open 

dialogue and the least disruptive for your mentor; morning 

coffee, lunch, and Friday afternoon are likely possibilities. Since 

Jones-Selden has several protégés, she routinely establishes 

regular monthly lunch mentoring sessions. 

Find Impromptu Mentoring Opportunities

When following up on complex subjects, Nienaber prefers 

“walk-arounds” rather than writing an e-mail because it 

increases opportunities for deeper discussions. Additionally, 

when he sees someone handle an issue particularly effectively, 

he talks with them afterward about what they were considering 

during a potentially difficult conversation.

Meet Regularly

Project demands can easily supersede mentoring meetings. But 

wide gaps between meetings will kill momentum and the depth 

of connection. Brennan notes that making time for mentoring 

meetings is a challenge and needs to be a priority. One of her 

52 | ASK MAGAZINE
protégés likened the experience to taking your car in for a tuneup. “It’s an hour ‘time-out’ where you get to be open, honest, 

and unguarded; to think strategically, consider questions, listen, 

learn, and re-energize.”

Learning with Your Mentor

Create a Purposeful, Open Discussion 

Start by discussing your intent and expectations. Barney said, 

“You have to have some hutzpah in asking your mentor what 

he or she wants to get out of the relationship.” Scott feels that 

meeting in his division chief’s office makes it too formal, so 

he takes his mentor to Starbucks where they can talk more as 

equals. When Nienaber asked Ryschkewitsch to be his mentor, 

Ryschkewitsch set a condition: “Only if you coach me, too. You 

have to give me feedback on at least one thing you think I could 

do better.” Making the mentoring relationship two-way shifts the 

power structure of the relationship to a more collaborative one. 

Focus on How You Think

Expertise is a combination of knowledge and thinking skills—

skill in diagnosing issues, understanding their causes, and 

making difficult judgment calls. One of Ryschkewitsch’s mentors 

taught him the skill of thinking down a path when diagnosing 

and understanding technical problems and recognizing when 

to shift paths. Now he passes on that lesson by teaching his 

protégés this skill of thinking down multiple paths. 

Practice Thinking with Your Mentor

You can only develop a skill through practice. We understand 

the importance of practice in the arts and sports. Pianists learn 

by playing for their teacher; the teacher guides and directs them 

based on hearing them play. Developing good thinking skills 

is much the same. When Nienaber turned to Rosemary Baize 

at Langley to help with a difficult career decision, she asked 

probing questions that helped him sort out emotions, facts, and 

outcomes rather than giving him suggestions. By helping him 

shift the way he thought about the decision, she steered him 

away from some poor choices. 

Ask Your Mentor to Help You Think

Don’t ask your mentor what to do. Instead think aloud, as 

Nienaber did, about a judgment call and ask your mentor 

to question and guide you with questions like, “What am 

I missing? What considerations should I have? Help me 

understand the science or principles that are working here.’’ 

Then ask your mentor to guide you in making a decision in the 

same questioning way. Your mentor is likely to ask you about 

the options, the assumptions you are making about them, if 

they really address the issue, the science behind them, potential 

consequences, or other dramatically different approaches to the 

resolution. Sometimes it may feel that your mentor is driving 

you down unnecessary routes, but remember: the purpose of the 

discussion is not to solve the problem but expand your thinking. 

Explore How Your Mentor Thinks

Pay attention to where your mentor directs you, the hidden clues 

he or she uses to correctly diagnose the situation; her analysis 

of the assumptions you are making; the science, research, or 

principles he draws on to understand the situation; the issues 

he or she is concerned about as you consider right courses of 

action together. Paying attention to how your mentor thinks as 

you discuss a technical, managerial, or career issue is a great way 

to learn. Because you are discussing a real issue that matters to 

you, the relevance, depth, and consequences of your mentor’s 

attention and concerns will have much more impact than if you 

simply hear a story about one of his or her projects. 

Learn to Think Aloud

Being a good protégé will make you a better mentor and vice 

versa. Protégés often think they should get the “right answer” 

from their mentor, but if you learn to explore your own and 

your mentor’s thinking openly, you’ll develop the skills you 

need to guide protégés when you start mentoring yourself. 

Building the Future

The NASA staff I interviewed said their mentors’ guidance was 

critical to their success. Hopefully these tips will help you carry on 

that success. As Ryschkewitsch said, “Mentoring is more than just 

helping the individual. It is bringing up the next generation.” ●

richard mcdermoTT, president of McDermott Consulting, is an author and consultant 

on designing knowledge organizations, transferring expertise, and building communities of 

practice. His forthcoming book, How to Think Like an Expert, is scheduled to be published by 

Harvard Business Press.

SOMETIMES IT MAy fEEL ThAT yOuR MENTOR IS DRIvING yOu DOWN uNNECESSARy 

ROuTES, buT REMEMbER: ThE PuRPOSE Of ThE DISCuSSION IS NOT TO SOLvE ThE 

PRObLEM buT ExPAND yOuR ThINKING.

ASK MAGAZINE | 53
Where Is the Knowledge in NASA?

BY LAURENCE PRUSAK 

The Knowledge Notebook

Imagine if the Curiosity rover found evidence of 

life on Mars—not fossil microorganisms, but a 

live, English-speaking Martian. Suppose he (or 

it) started asking us questions like, “What does 

NASA do?” Well, that’s easy enough to answer. 

For the sake of simplicity, we might say, “Space 

exploration.” But then suppose our Martian asks, 

“How do you know how to do that? Where do you 

keep the knowledge you need?”

Well, that is one interesting question.

Where do you think this knowledge is? You 

would think it should be pretty easy to answer such 

a question, since knowledge is so important, but in 

the many years I have asked people in organizations 

this question, I have received very diverse answers 

and almost no consistency of responses. That lack 

of agreement certainly leads me to wonder how we 

can ever hope to work effectively with knowledge 

and learning if we can not even tell where it is.

There are several reasons for this uncertainty. 

Knowledge is by its nature intangible. It has 

no physical form that we locate and describe. 

That uncomfortable fact leads many to conflate 

knowledge with information or data, or sometimes 

even IT systems, which are concrete and can be 

pointed to and measured. In fact, those are the 

answers I most frequently get when I ask the 

question. But the answers are wrong. Knowledge 

is not data or information. It is not an IT system 

(or its content).

Another reason for this odd failure to answer 

what seems like a basic question is that knowledge 

is rarely, if ever, considered in any class or graduate 

program. Take a look at the index in the back of 

any text on economics or organizational behavior. 

Not a word about knowledge. Most strategy 

books ignore it, too. That is remarkable given that 

knowledge is, in many ways, our most important 

source of wealth. It is surely the basis of NASA’s 

capabilities and capacities. (I will write about 

why this is the case in another column.) But if 

something is rarely taught or even mentioned in 

the literature, it is a good bet it will be pretty hard 

to arrive at a common and meaningful definition 

or description of it.

OK, so let’s try to answer the question. Where 

is NASA’s knowledge?

There are generally three main places to 

“look” for knowledge in any large and complex 

organization. The first one—often mentioned—is 

in the people of the organization. This is the most 

obvious response, and an important one. We can 

call such knowledge “embodied” as it is literally in 

the bodies of individuals. Research and reflection 

can show, however, that thinking only about the 

knowledge worker—the individual—is not a very 

useful approach to knowledge. 

Knowledge is very social. It is found in 

organizational practices, networks, communities, 

and other aggregated units. People come and go 

in organizations, yet the organizations continue to 

“know” things and have capabilities. IBM is more 

than one hundred years old. None of its original 

employees are still alive and yet the company 

retains its technical know-how, no matter how 

many individual employees leave over time. Procter 

and Gamble is even older and preserves its original 

DNA—knowledge about household goods and 

how to sell them. This is because the knowledge 

is retained primarily in practices that are sustained 

over time in spite of employee turnover.

A second and less apparent place to find 

54 | ASK MAGAZINE
knowledge is in the organizational routines and processes in 

which organizational knowledge is embedded. All organizations 

more or less do the same things day after day. These established 

routines, which apply knowledge in an organized series of 

activities, allow knowledge to be retained for as long as it is 

needed. It represents an organization’s best take on the best 

way to accomplish some aspect of its work. NASA procedural 

requirements, like NPR 7120.5, incorporate a lot of the agency’s 

knowledge about carrying out projects. These patterns, of course, 

change over time, when new or better knowledge is recognized 

and agreed upon and new processes are developed and embedded.

And the third place to find knowledge is in systems and 

documents. Although we can make the case that it is really 

information that is found there, we can reasonably state that the 

information is a kind of frozen or represented form of knowledge. 

It is less dynamic and far less contextual than the other forms, 

but it is still a vital component of effective capabilities.

So here is a partial but I hope useful answer to our Martian’s 

query. It’s a start, at least. Until we can have some consensus 

around these issues and have given serious thought and time 

to them, we will be fated to under-optimize the most valuable 

thing we have. And the most expensive, too! ● 

KNOWLEDGE IS vERy SOCIAL. IT IS 

fOuND IN ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES, 

NETWORKS, COMMuNITIES, AND OThER 

AGGREGATED uNITS. 

ASK MAGAZINE | 55
ASKinteractive

For More on 

Our Stories

Additional information 

pertaining to articles 

featured in this issue 

can be found by visiting 

the following web sites:

• nustar:

www.nasa.gov/nustar

• scan testbed: 

spaceflightsystems.grc.

nasa.gov/SOPO/SCO/

SCaNTestbed

• SIERRA: 

airbornescience.nasa.

gov/aircraft/SIERRA

NASA in the News

On August 25, 2012, Neil Armstrong, America’s first man on the moon, passed 

away at the age of 82. NASA joined the nation in celebrating Armstrong’s life and 

achievements. Friends and family, including fellow astronauts, scientists, and 

engineers who worked with Armstrong throughout his career, held several memorials 

to remember the man who took that first small step and giant leap for human space 

exploration. Many of those astronauts and former colleagues sat down to speak 

with NASA Television about the Apollo 11 commander: www.nasa.gov/multimedia/

videogallery/index.html?media_id=152143701. The agency also curated a photo gallery 

that captures Armstrong’s life throughout his career at NASA: www.nasa.gov/topics/people/galleries/armstrong.

html. Armstrong’s full biography can be found at www.nasa.gov/topics/people/features/armstrong_obit.html.

Sounds of Space

University of Iowa researchers for the Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite 

and Integrated Science (EMFISIS) aboard the Radiation Belt Storm Probe released 

a recording of the phenomenon known as “chorus” radio waves. The radio waves, 

which are at frequencies audible to the human ear, are emitted by energetic particles 

in Earth’s magnetosphere. “People have known about chorus for decades,” said 

EMFISIS principal investigator Craig Kletzing. “Radio receivers are used to picking 

it up, and it sounds a lot like birds chirping. It was often more easily picked up in the 

mornings, which along with the chirping sound is why it’s sometimes referred to as 

‘dawn chorus.’” Listen to the chorus of space at 

www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/rbsp/news/emfisis-chorus.html.

Destination Station

As the International Space Station transitions from construction to full-time research 

lab, NASA reflects on what it took to make an orbiting space station a reality and 

what it stands to offer going forward. From partnership to operations to scientific 

research, the past ten years and next ten years have been captured in a series 

of videos, photos, and interactive features in “Destination Station,” available at 

www.nasa.gov/externalflash/destination_station.

feedback

We welcome your comments on what you’ve read in this issue of ASK and your suggestions for articles you 

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