Academy Sharing Knowledge

The NASA Source for Project Management and Engineering Excellence | APPEL SPRING | 2010

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Inside

Cities at Night

Interview with William Gerstenmaier

Anatomy of a Mishap Investigation
ON THE COVER

This space-station view of Los Angeles was taken by Astronaut Donald Pettit, who 

lived aboard the International Space Station for five and a half months. The city is 

defined by yellow-orange, sodium-vapor-lit streets in north–south, east–west grids. 

In between the main streets it is relatively dark due to the design of street lighting 

that minimizes stray light. Geographic features of coastlines and mountains remain 

dark. At the edge of town, the lights abruptly fade into the surrounding desert. Photo Credit: Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center/Donald Pettit
Contents

19

DEPARTMENTS

3

In This Issue

By Don Cohen

4

From the APPEL Director

Project Management Trends 

and Future Reality

By Ed Hoffmann

60

ASK Reader Response

61 

ASK Bookshelf 

62

The Knowledge Notebook

On Not Going It Alone: 

No Organization Is an Island

By Laurence Prusak

64 

ASK Interactive

INSIGHTS

9

Space Exploration in the 21st Century: 

Global Opportunities and Challenges 

By Jean-Jacques Dordain The director 

general of the European Space Agency says 

the future of space exploration depends on 

global cooperation.

19

Interview with William Gerstenmaier

By Don Cohen The associate administrator 

for Space Operations talks about his early 

NASA experience and the collaborative 

“miracle” of the International Space Station.

47

Sharing Knowledge About Knowledge

By Don Cohen and Matthew Kohut 

The Academy’s first Knowledge Forum 

brought together people from several 

industries and countries.

50

NextGen: Preparing 

for More Crowded Skies

By Kerry Ellis NASA is working with 

other agencies to prepare for everincreasing air traffic.

STORIES

5 

Anatomy of a Mishap Investigation

By Rick Obenschain A dedicated team 

applies a rigorous method to discovering 

the causes of a mission failure.

12

Are We Alone? Answering This 

Question Is Not a Lone Venture

By Wendy Dolci, Ed Goolish, and Carl

Pilcher To understand the potential for 

life on other worlds, NASA’s Astrobiology 

Institute builds a science community on 

this one.

25

NASA Past and Future: 

A Personal Memoir

By Ken Randle The author describes the 

origins of the Voyager and Mariner 10 missions.

29

The Next Big Thing Is Small

By Haley Stephenson Tiny satellites benefit 

science and education.

34

Cities at Night: An Orbital Perspective

By Donald Pettit Patterns and colors of 

light seen from space tell us a lot about who 

and where we are on Earth.

43

Open-Door Innovation

By Andrew Petro Centennial Challenge 

competitions invite and encourage 

innovation from anywhere.

54

Petrobras and the Power of Stories

By Alexandre Korowajczuk and Andrea 

Coelho Farias Almeida The Brazilian 

energy company uses storytelling to teach 

a new generation of employees.

34 5

ASK MAGAZINE | 1
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 real-life 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 APPEL Knowledge Sharing programs and products, please contact 

Katherine Thomas, ASRC Management Services, 6303 Ivy Lane, Suite 130, Greenbelt, 

MD 20770; katherine.thomas@asrcms.com; 301-793-9973. 

To subscribe to ASK, please send your full name and preferred mailing address 

(including mail stop, if applicable) to ASKmagazine@asrcms.com.

Issue No. 38

Staff

APPEL 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@asrcms.com

contributing EditorS

Matt Kohut

mattkohut@infactcommunications.com

Haley Stephenson

haley.stephenson@valador.com

Senior Knowledge Sharing

Consultant

Jon Boyle

jon.boyle@asrcms.com

Knowledge Sharing Analysts

Ben Bruneau

ben.bruneau@asrcms.com

Katherine Thomas

katherine.thomas@asrcms.com

Mai Ebert

mai.ebert@asrcms.com

APPEL program Manager

Yvonne Massaquoi

yvonne.massaquoi@asrcms.com

Design

Hirshorn Zuckerman Design Group, Inc.

www.hzdg.com

Printing Specialist

Hanta Ralay

hanta.ralay-1@nasa.gov

Printing

GraphTec
At the NASA Project Management Challenge in Galveston, 

Texas, this past February, Jean-Jacques Dordain, director 

general of the European Space Agency, predicted that global 

collaboration will define future space exploration. Only a 

joint effort can tackle the immense technical and economic 

challenges of extending our reach in space. Part of Dordain’s 

speech appears in this issue of ASK (“Space Exploration 

in the 21st Century”), and other articles here deal directly 

with international cooperation or with the related issues of 

broadening the search for critical expertise and building 

the trust and understanding diverse teams need to work 

together successfully.

In the interview, William Gerstenmaier reflects on the 

development of the International Space Station, the premier 

example of multination collaboration in space. He talks about 

the long working relationship that has made it possible for 

the United States and Russia to cooperate effectively in 

times of crisis and of the value of partners taking different 

approaches to the same technical challenge. These different 

ways of looking at a problem help create the “requisite 

variety” that Laurence Prusak identifies as essential to a 

robust organization or project in “The Knowledge Notebook.” 

Prusak argues strenuously against “going it alone.” He says 

that organizations can thrive in this complex, changing world 

only by welcoming knowledge from many sources.

Ed Hoffman’s “From the APPEL Director” column brings 

together the themes of international cooperation and trends 

in project management. He emphasizes the importance of 

cognitive, cultural, and geographic diversity in carrying out 

demanding projects. NASA’s Astrobiology Institute (“Are We 

Alone?”) is an outstanding example. The study of potential 

extraterrestrial life necessarily involves many scientific 

disciplines. The institute uses cross-training classes, 

face-to-face conferences, strategic-planning workshops, 

and videoconferencing technology to support worldwide 

astrobiology collaboration and provides grants to help 

educate the next generation of astrobiologists. The challenge 

in creating the kinds of teams that Hoffman describes, and 

the astrobiology work exemplifies, is to develop teams 

that have enough cohesion to work well together without 

undermining the diversity of perspective and experience that 

makes them creative and flexible.

In “Petrobras and the Power of Stories,” Alexandre 

Korowajczuk and Andrea Coelho Farias Almeida look at the 

issue of creating cohesion and sharing rich knowledge from 

a somewhat different angle. The Brazilian energy company is 

carrying out a major storytelling initiative to teach thousands 

of new employees about the organization’s values and 

culture as well as the real-life expertise needed to carry out 

the company’s operations. Hearing the stories—usually in 

the presence of veterans who lived them—communicates 

subtle knowledge that could never be conveyed through 

manuals or memos.

One way NASA has sought new ideas from diverse 

sources in recent years is by sponsoring the Centennial 

Challenges program, which offers an open invitation to 

individuals and groups to undertake technical challenges 

ranging from designing a better spacesuit glove to building 

a robotic lunar-soil excavator (“Open-Door Innovation,” 

by Andrew Petro). Even the entries that do not win prizes 

sometimes demonstrate surprising, potentially valuable 

new technologies. Many of the competitions—the glove 

and excavator, and the lunar lander and power-beaming 

challenges—are inspiring new ideas that will undoubtedly 

contribute to future space exploration.

Don Cohen

Managing Editor

In This Issue

ASK MAGAZINE | 3
Project Management Trends and Future Reality

By Ed Hoffman

From the APPEL Director

Space exploration has always 

been international. NASA’s first 

international mission dates back 

nearly fifty years, and the agency 

has had more than three thousand 

agreements with over one hundred 

countries in its history. What has 

changed is the complexity of our 

projects, our partners’ capabilities, and the number of spacefaring 

nations. How we work together has also evolved. Over the 

past year, as I reviewed current project management thinking 

with colleagues at NASA and around the world, five themes 

kept surfacing: team diversity, virtual work, sustainability, 

innovation, and portfolio management. 

Team diversity—cognitive, cultural, and geographic—

has increased as projects become more complex, technically 

challenging, and global. Cognitive diversity refers to varying 

perspectives based on expertise, education, experience, age, 

training, and professional background. Cultural diversity 

manifests itself through different languages as well as less 

obvious elements including goals, politics, budgets, and national 

security concerns. Geographic diversity continues to grow as 

projects involve multiple partners from government, industry, 

academia, and nonprofit organizations.

Virtual work attracts talent and facilitates relationships that 

might otherwise be unavailable. Companies like IBM, Procter 

and Gamble, and AT&T have partially or fully eliminated 

traditional offices. NASA and IBM host meetings on “islands” in 

Second Life. Project managers are still trying to understand ways 

to remedy challenges like isolation, performance measurement, 

and the blurry line between work and personal life, but virtual 

work is here to stay. 

More than a synonym for “environmentally friendly,” 

sustainability includes principles and practices that enable mission 

success and long-term societal health and progress. Sustainability 

is a systems-thinking challenge; it tackles questions of life-cycle 

impact, which can extend far beyond the duration of a project. To 

help address this challenge, NASA held its first Green Engineering 

Masters Forum in 2009.

Innovation in products and processes is a constant in the 

world of complex projects, shifting demographics, public–private 

collaboration, and the need for more sustainable practices. 

Projects demand adaptive thinking to adjust to changing 

requirements, budgets, and resources. Technology development 

is also essential.

Managing one project successfully is not enough. The 

larger challenge is managing a portfolio of programs and 

projects. NASA’s mission directorates function as its portfolio 

management organizations. Portfolio management will continue 

to increase in importance.

Complex international projects shape the context for these 

trends. For me, the highlight of PM Challenge 2010 was the 

first-ever international track, which explored the international 

dimensions of NASA’s missions. The day after that meeting, I met 

with counterparts from other space agencies and representatives 

of organizations, including the Project Management Institute and 

the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), to share ideas 

about professional development and explore avenues for future 

collaborations. There was strong agreement about the potential 

benefits of finding more ways to work together. Many colleagues 

expressed interest in establishing an International Project 

Management Committee under the auspices of the IAF.

One thing seems clear: in the years ahead, the trend 

toward greater collaboration in space exploration will continue. 

Getting into space is expensive, and no single organization has 

all the answers. European Space Agency Director General JeanJacques Dordain summed up the imperative for international 

collaboration in his address at the PM Challenge. “There is 

no alternative,” he said. “We shall have to invent the future 

together.” ●

4 | ASK MAGAZINE
Title

By 

Intro

ANATOMY

By Rick Obenschain

Photo Credit: Orbital Sciences Corporation

NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory and its Taurus 

booster lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base. 

A contingency was declared a few minutes later. 

STORY | ASK MAGAZINE | 5
The likely source of that failure quickly became apparent: the 

fairing—the clamshell-shaped cover that protects the satellite 

during the early stages of the flight—had not separated as 

expected from the upper stage of the Taurus XL, and the extra 

mass of the still-attached component prevented the launch 

vehicle from reaching orbital altitude and speed. But the reason 

for that malfunction was far from clear. 

The day after the accident, I was asked to lead the Mishap 

Investigation Board (MIB) that would try to understand why 

the fairing failed to separate and recommend design and process 

improvements to prevent similar problems in the future. NASA 

Headquarters challenged the board to get from day one to a 

final report in sixty days—a dramatically shorter span than 

most past mishap investigations. We did it in eighty-four days, 

which is still remarkably fast given the amount of work that 

needed to be done. 

The MIB Team

Most of the credit for that efficiency goes to our down-to-earth, 

focused, dedicated team members, who often worked literally 

seven days a week. Some other important factors contributed. 

One was my decision to keep the team as small as possible, 

given our managerial and technical needs. There were fifteen 

of us, six board members and seven advisors—consisting of 

technical experts, legal, public affairs, external relations—plus 

two consultants we brought in toward the end of the process to 

deal with specific technical issues. 

We also worked hard to be in close and constant contact. 

Team members from various locations got together at Goddard 

Space Flight Center to start the process, and we met frequently 

in person at Goddard and other sites during the whole course 

of our investigation. All in all, members met for fifty days at 

Goddard and twenty-five days elsewhere. In addition, we had 

daily “tag-ups” and other teleconferences to share information 

and ideas. A central online repository of documents helped us 

work together over the distances among our locations. 

We were further helped by the openness of Orbital Sciences 

Corporation, the supplier of the Taurus launch vehicle, and the 

Kennedy Space Center Launch Services Program. They shared 

information from their own investigations and cooperated fully 

with ours. They were as determined as we were to discover and 

correct the cause of the failure. 

Looking for the Root Cause

Our job was to try to discover both the intermediate cause or 

causes of the fairing separation malfunction—the particular 

component or components that failed to function as expected—

and the root cause of those failures: the organizational behaviors, 

conditions, or practices that ultimately led to the production 

and acceptance of what proved to be faulty mechanisms. If you Photo Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin 

On February 24, 2009, a Taurus XL launch vehicle carrying the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 

satellite lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The satellite was designed to 

measure atmospheric carbon dioxide to provide precise information about human and natural 

carbon-emission sources. The spacecraft failed to reach orbit and instead plunged into the ocean 

near Antarctica.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory on the launchpad 

at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. 

6 | ASK MAGAZINE
find and fix the intermediate, technical problems but ignore 

the underlying sources of those problems, they are likely to 

persist and lead to other failures, so identifying the root cause 

is important. 

In the first three weeks, we conducted more than seventy 

interviews to collect as much data and information about the 

mishap as possible. Then we used NASA’s Root-Cause Analysis 

tool to look for that fundamental cause. I admit to starting out 

with some skepticism about the tool, which requires adherence 

to demanding, detailed analytical processes. Having worked 

as an engineer earlier in my NASA career, I have always been 

concerned that some formal processes supposedly designed to 

support the work may actually get in the way of developing the 

product. In actual fact, though, what initially looked like a process 

that might be too rigid turned out to be usefully rigorous. Had 

we not gone through all the steps required by the Root-Cause 

Analysis tool, we could easily have missed possible contributors 

to the launch failure. In situations as complex and ambiguous as 

this one, relying on an informal sense of where the fault probably 

lies just doesn’t work. We ultimately offered a few suggestions 

for improving the tool, but they were ways to make it more user 

friendly; in general, it proved its power and usefulness. 

Using root-cause analysis, we ended up with a fault tree that 

had 133 branches—133 factors we needed to evaluate with the 

tool. That process eliminated 129 of them, leaving four possible 

causes of the fairing-separation failure. Although some of those 

four seemed more qualitatively likely than others, none could 

be ruled out. 

Chief among the reasons that we were not able to identify 

the cause was that we didn’t have access to the failed hardware 

that probably would have given a definitive answer. It was at 

the bottom of the ocean near Antarctica. Not having that clear 

answer, we were not able to determine a root cause either. 

The MIB Report

Our report detailed the four factors that could not be 

discounted as possible intermediate causes of the mishap. 

Along with our description of these possible causes, we offered 

Inside Building 1032 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, technicians install 

the Orbiting Carbon Observatory spacecraft inside the payload fairing.

Photo Credit: NASA

... what initially looked like a

process that might be too rigid 

turned out to be usefully rigorous.

ASK MAGAZINE | 7
recommendations for how to ensure that they would not pose a 

risk on future missions. Briefly, these are the possible causes the 

board identified and our recommendations for improvement. 

Frangible-joint base ring may not have fractured 

as required.

An incomplete fracture of the frangible-joint base ring that 

holds the fairing halves together and attaches them to the upper 

stage of the rocket could have prevented fairing separation. We 

could not discount this possibility because Orbital Sciences 

did not have complete information on the characteristics of 

the aluminum used in this component. We recommended that 

future aluminum extrusions for this component have a traceable 

“pedigree” to aluminum lots that have been appropriately and 

thoroughly tested. 

Electrical subsystem may have failed.

The responsible subsystem might not have supplied enough 

electricity to fire the explosive devices that released the fairing. 

This remained a possibility because telemetry sent from the 

launch vehicle was not designed to measure and report the 

amount of current needed. We recommended changing the 

telemetry so that it would provide this information. 

Pneumatic system may not have provided enough 

pressure to separate fairing.

We could not prove that the pneumatic system—a hot-gas 

generator, thrusters, and pneumatic tubing—supplied enough 

pressure to separate the fairings. We recommended design 

modifications and improved testing of the hot-gas generator 

system design to provide pressure to the thruster. If those 

changes prove impractical or impossible, we recommended 

using an alternate system. 

Flexible, confined detonating cord could have snagged 

on part of frangible joint.

This seemed an unlikely failure cause, but we could not rule it out. 

We recommended rerouting the cord or adding a physical barrier 

if further analysis and testing could not eliminate the possibility. 

In the days since we presented our report, continuing 

efforts of the Kennedy Launch Services Program and Orbital 

Sciences have shown that electrical system malfunction and 

detonating cord snagging were not contributing factors to the 

failure. The specific recommendations made by the MIB are 

being incorporated to ensure that these potential failure modes 

are prevented in the future. 

A Valuable Investigation

All the skill and hard work of the board members and the many 

others who helped us did not get us to the clear-cut intermediate 

and root causes we had hoped to find. Instead, we “surrounded” 

the actual cause by identifying multiple possibilities. A few 

people have suggested this means that the Orbiting Carbon 

Observatory MIB “failed.” I don’t agree. The detailed and 

extensive testing and analysis that allowed us to identify the 

four potential intermediate causes should go a long way toward 

ensuring that the fairing problem will not recur. And our 

recommendations, although they do not get at a definitive root 

cause, do speak to small but meaningful shortfalls in testing, 

inspection, quality control, and manufacturing that will help 

guide the recovery activities. 

One general conclusion that our work supports is the 

importance of rigorously adhering to the procedures designed 

to eliminate and minimize as much risk as possible. This 

is especially true when the project team has only sporadic 

experience with a particular vehicle, as was the case with the 

Taurus XL used to launch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 

satellite. Only eight Taurus rockets have been launched, with 

typically several years separating launches. Many of the people 

involved with launching the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 

had little or no experience with this launch vehicle. The less 

often you launch, the more attention you should pay to the 

formal procedures that embody much of the information 

and knowledge past practitioners have acquired about how to 

launch successfully. ●

Rick Obenschain has worked at NASA for more than forty 

years in positions ranging from discipline engineer to project 

manager five times, to director of engineering, to director of flight 

projects. He is currently the deputy center director at Goddard 

Space Flight Center. 

8 | ASK MAGAZINE
Forty years after the first landing on the moon by two American astronauts, the significance of that 

historical step of human exploration is very different from what it was at that time. Then, it was a 

clear demonstration of the supremacy of U.S. technology over the world, and a symbol of the U.S. 

identity. Forty years later, it is not anymore a matter of the moon and the United States, but rather of 

planet Earth and humankind; twenty-seven astronauts have seen planet Earth as a small and fragile 

golf ball floating in the universe and, as a result, helped develop the understanding that our future 

can only be global. 

Space Exploration in the 21st Century: 

Global Opportunities and Challenges

By Jean-Jacques Dordain

INSIGHT | ASK MAGAZINE | 9
Thanks to that first landing on the moon, we have witnessed 

two paradigm shifts. The first is about the objective, which 

has shifted from space to planet Earth. The compelling urge of 

man to explore and discover is not enough to justify engaging 

in long-term exploration. There is a need, at least in Europe—

it may be different in other societies—to identify benefits of 

space exploration able to generate a resilient political and 

public support, which is a condition for space exploration to 

be sustainable over the years. The benefits must be measurable 

on Earth: economic growth, technological innovation, scientific 

information, international cooperation, education, all of which 

can contribute to solving problems here. Exploration addresses 

the future of planet Earth.

The second paradigm shift is about the process, which 

has moved from competition to cooperation. We have started 

with one flag on the moon, then two flags for the Apollo Soyuz 

mission, then four with Space Station Freedom, and now five 

flags for the International Space Station (ISS). The cooperative 

process may be much slower than the competitive race, but it is 

also much more robust and sustainable.

Future space exploration can indeed only be global, and it will 

require us to assemble the nations that explored individually in the 

past to explore collectively in the future. This is not easy. It will be 

the most difficult part of exploration, much more difficult than 

any required technological development, but it is necessary. There 

is no alternative. We shall have to invent the future together.

Because it will not be easy, we will have to go there in steps. 

I see three major steps: make the utilization of the ISS a success 

for exploration, develop robotic exploration plans, and define a 

human exploration scenario.

Make ISS Utilization a Success

The recent decision taken by President Obama to extend the 

operation of ISS to 2020 and beyond is very good news for all 

partners. As NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden has said, we 

were waiting for that decision and even asking for that decision. 

These next ten years are necessary to make ISS utilization a 

success, to demonstrate to the public and governments that they 

were right to invest in it. Also, we need time to reap the benefits, 

be it for science, for technologies, or for new partnerships. As I 

said to the Augustine Committee, we shall not build exploration 

on the failure of the ISS. So our first priority shall be to ensure 

the success of ISS.

These next ten years will provide time and perspective to 

improve the ISS and make it a concrete step toward exploration. The 

decision not only represents five additional years of exploitation, 

it also provides a perspective long enough for all partners to think 

about new ideas, new approaches, and new hardware. The two 

questions we should now ask ourselves are how to increase the 

benefits of the ISS, and how to decrease the costs of using it. 

How can we increase the benefits of the ISS? These are 

some of the possibilities:

• Increasing capabilities, not by adding new labs, but by 

reducing bottlenecks such as storage, communications, or 

download; 

• Extending the range of scientific utilization toward new 

fields such as Earth observation, monitoring of natural 

disasters, climate change; 

• Improving operations, for instance through a common 

transportation policy or a common operations policy—

that is, defining common interfaces between each 

htpartner’s elements; 

• Testing new systems and technologies, for instance in the 

fields of life support or resources recycling;

• Extending the partnership to other partners, on 

conditions to be defined. To be sustainable, the space 

station partnership cannot be closed.

How can we decrease the costs of ISS utilization? 

The objective is to decrease the costs of production and 

operations in order to rebalance development and production 

activities. The use of commercial services is one interesting 

track—not the only one, but a track that requires the space 

agencies to think and to adapt.

My biggest fear as the director general of the European Space 

Agency (ESA) is that ESA could become a dinosaur, no longer 

adapted to its environment. We have to change, continuously. 

10 | ASK MAGAZINE
This is not easy, in particular because we are a successful agency, 

and it is easy to keep doing what has made us successful. But the 

future will not be made with the recipes of the past. 

Commercial services may indeed be one way. We have 

already experienced that in Europe, by creating the commercial 

operator Arianespace for launch services, but that was thirty 

years ago. Reflections are ongoing to see how we can adapt this 

scenario for the future.

We should not forget, however, that the customer for 

the ISS and exploration is and will remain governments, not 

private organizations. I refuse the much too simple statement 

that agencies are expensive and industry is cheap. The reality is 

as usual much more complex: agencies work under substantial 

constraints imposed by their governments, such as distribution 

of activities, but agencies can also be cheaper, and we in ESA shall 

work together with the other agencies to reduce significantly 

utilization costs. Agencies cannot do without industry, but 

industry also cannot do without agencies. 

Any progress made for the utilization of the ISS will be a 

progress made for exploration. The ISS will be valued also by its 

capacity to support exploration.

The space station is the first step in human exploration 

beyond low-Earth orbit!

Develop Robotic Exploration Plans

Last year, ESA and NASA made a significant step by taking a 

joint initiative for a systematic robotic exploration of Mars; we 

have decided to use every opportunity to go to Mars together, 

and we have already defined joint missions that will be launched 

in 2016 and 2018. The ultimate goal is a joint Mars sample 

return in the mid-2020s. There, also, the partnership is not 

closed and must be open to other partners.

Beyond this Mars robotic exploration plan, other robotic 

missions should be planned as precursors to human exploration, 

around or on the surface of other destinations such as the moon 

or asteroids. Such missions should provide detailed information 

on the topography and geochemical properties of the surface 

of these destinations, and allow the testing of possibilities and 

techniques for “living off the land.”

A major interest of robotic investigation is to involve 

industrial expertise outside the traditional space industry and, 

therefore, to widen the base of stakeholders and increase the 

synergy between space-bound and Earth-bound interests. 

Define a Human Space Exploration Scenario

As Administrator Bolden has noted, there is no common vision 

among international partners about a human space-exploration 

scenario beyond the exploitation of the ISS. The U.S. 

Constellation program is being terminated, though the United 

States remains committed to explore beyond low-Earth orbit. 

In Europe we are currently reflecting on our future humanexploration plans. Other partners may have plans, but they are 

individual plans rather than a contribution to a global scenario. 

A global exploration strategy has been developed by fourteen 

space agencies, including ESA. But this global exploration 

strategy has not been addressed at a political level and does not 

represent a political strategy shared by an enlarged community 

of international partners.

A high-level political forum, including current partners as 

well as potential new partners of the ISS, should be set up with 

the objectives of developing a common vision for exploration. At 

the space-agency level, we can develop a common architecture 

for human space exploration. But we can’t develop the political 

vision. We are waiting for someone to take the initiative.

Which partner in the world has the willingness and credibility 

to propose such a political forum? I am convinced that the United 

States is the best suited to take such an initiative ... but when?

As the French author and aviator Saint-Exupéry said, 

“... the question about the future is not to predict it, but to 

make it possible.” So let us work together to make it possible. ●

Jean-Jacques Dordain is the director general of the 

European Space Agency.

Future space exploration can indeed only be global, and it will require us

to assemble the nations that explored individually in the past to explore

collectively in the future.

ASK MAGAZINE | 11
An image of a nebula is displayed 

on a hyperwall at the California 

Institute for Telecommunications 

and Information Technology. Photo Credit: Lockheed Martin/Estelle Dodson

Are We 

12 | ASK MAGAZINE | STORY
How does life begin and evolve? Is there life 

elsewhere in the universe? What is the future 

of life on Earth and beyond? The NASA 

Astrobiology Institute (NAI) was founded in 

1998 as part of NASA’s long-term quest to explore 

these fundamental questions. The NAI is one of 

four elements of NASA’s Astrobiology Program, 

which has its roots in the agency’s Exobiology 

Program established in 1960.

Alone? 

Answering

This Question 

Is Not a 

Lone Venture

By Wendy Dolci, Ed Goolish, and Carl Pilcher

ASK MAGAZINE | 13
The field of astrobiology developed rapidly during the 

mid-1990s as several threads of scientific investigation came 

together. Scientists were recognizing the great diversity of life 

on Earth and life’s ability to survive in extreme conditions. At 

the same time, the diversity of solar-system environments and 

their potential to harbor life were increasingly understood, and 

extrasolar planets were first detected. The NAI was born amid 

this convergence of discoveries and new ideas. 

Capitalizing on advances in information technology that 

had begun to make remote collaboration practical, the NAI 

was designed as a nontraditional “institute without walls” 

with researchers distributed across the United States. Currently, 

fourteen interdisciplinary teams—encompassing about six 

hundred researchers at more than one hundred institutions—

compose the core of the Institute. The teams work under 

competitively awarded cooperative agreements with five-year 

terms. A small management office at Ames Research Center 

administers the Institute and provides leadership to make the 

whole more than the sum of its parts.

Although basic and applied research in astrobiology is the 

Institute’s first priority, NASA also envisioned that the NAI would 

test a new paradigm in science management, bringing scientists 

together across disciplinary, geographic, and organizational 

boundaries. The institute is further charged with playing a 

leading role in shaping space missions, making innovative 

use of information technologies, nourishing public interest in 

astrobiology through a strong education and outreach program, 

and training new generations of astrobiologists. This broad 

charter is a distinguishing characteristic of the NAI that puts the 

Institute and its science teams front and center in cultivating the 

field of astrobiology. 

Developing a Field, Creating a Community

Creating a community of scientists with diverse backgrounds is a 

multifaceted process. Astrobiology requires collaboration between 

researchers from the geo-, bio-, astro-, and other sciences. Of 

course, this expertise is not limited to one or even a few nations. 

With the founding of the NAI, NASA’s long-term commitment 

to astrobiology catalyzed a global astrobiology community. 

Partnership with the NAI lent weight to the establishment of 

organizations abroad such as the Centro de Astrobiología in Spain 

and the Australian Centre for Astrobiology. The NAI maintains 

these early partnerships and today also has partnerships with 

astrobiology organizations in Britain, France, and Russia as well 

as with the European Astrobiology Network Association. 

The NAI links national and global networks of astrobiologists 

through technology and a range of activities and funded 

programs. The Institute funds workshops and conference 

sessions, and it designed and operates the Astrobiology Program 

Web site for NASA Headquarters. It brings program news and 

activities together in one place online. Broad participation in NAI 

science is made possible through programs such as the Director’s 

Discretionary Fund, which awards small grants each year for 

seeding new ideas; a Minority Institution Research Support 

program; and NAI focus groups that advance specific topics of 

community interest.

Addressing the questions of astrobiology will take a sustained 

effort over generations. Current scientific investigations and space 

missions will, in many cases, be brought to fruition by today’s 

students. Recognizing that students need a stable environment 

to thrive, the NAI actively supports a growing network of earlycareer researchers in astrobiology. A key example is the NAI 

Postdoctoral Fellowship Program that has funded fifty-four 

postdoctoral fellows to date, with many of the earliest NAI 

fellows now in faculty positions and advising a new generation. 

An additional five hundred or so postdocs have been supported 

directly by NAI teams. 

A critical aspect of training the next generation of 

astrobiologists is preserving continuity in the face of budget 

fluctuations and turnover in grants. When astrobiology budget 

This artist’s concept illustrates the connection between life

and space exploration, both of which are key for astrobiology.

Image Credit: 

NASA/Cheryse Triano

14 | ASK MAGAZINE
cuts occurred during the mid-2000s, student support remained a 

top priority for the NAI. And in 2008, NAI provided “continuity 

funding” for students who faced potential loss of funds when 

team grants ended their five-year terms. 

From Competitors to Collaborators 

A central management challenge for the NAI is balancing 

healthy competition with collaboration. Selected teams must 

make the transition from the highly competitive proposal 

process to the collaborative environment of the NAI. Five years 

later they may again be competitors. Despite this, collaboration 

flourishes across the Institute. 

In the Institute’s early years, biennial general meetings 

drawing about five hundred scientists provided opportunities to 

meet, present research, and discuss potential collaboration. In 

recent years, strategic-planning workshops focused on particular 

goals, and topic-based “virtual meetings,” have replaced 

large, general meetings. For example, addressing the issue of 

competition versus collaboration head-on, a workshop was held 

immediately following the selection of ten new teams in 2009 

to identify common research threads. The premise was, “Okay, 

now the competition is over and we have fourteen NAI teams—

let’s see what we can accomplish together.” Such an approach is 

unusual; research teams typically go their own way once grants 

are awarded. The result was a suite of cross-institute initiatives 

and a new network of connections among researchers. 

One of these new initiatives became the subject of a 

“Workshop Without Walls” conducted in March 2010 using the 

NAI’s advanced collaborative technologies. The workshop, on 

“The Organic Continuum from the Interstellar Medium to the 

Early Earth,” was international, with more than 170 registrants 

from twenty-one U.S. states and sixteen other countries. Thirtythree scientific talks were presented over two days, with the vast 

majority of participants remaining at their home institutions—

or in some cases, at home! The ease of joining the workshop 

The Virtual 

Planetary Lab

How do you get fifty-five scientists 

with diverse science backgrounds 

from five countries and twenty-three 

organizations to work together? By 

posing questions that are so big that 

they force interdisciplinary collaboration, 

says Vikki Meadows, head of the NAI’s 

Virtual Planetary Lab (VPL) team at the 

University of Washington. The major 

question that drives Vikki and her team 

is this: Were we to find a rocky world 

orbiting another star, how would we 

know if that planet could or did support 

life? To help answer this question, 

the VPL team constructs models 

that simulate the planet’s interaction 

with its parent star, and the resulting 

environments and spectral signatures of 

Earth-like planets. These models help 

us understand what “the fingerprints” of 

life look like—so that we might recognize 

life on distant planets when we see it. 

The VPL team draws together scientists 

from more than fifteen disciplines, 

from biometeorologists to stellar 

spectroscopists—there is some truth 

to the inside joke that “it takes a planet 

to model a planet.” Team members live 

across the United States and in a handful 

of other countries, including Australia, 

Mexico, and France. They use a mix 

of videoconferences, teleconferences, 

Web sites, and online meeting tools 

and workspaces for communication 

and remote interactions. In-person 

meetings also play an important role. 

Developing a large team that works 

well together takes time. The fiveyear duration of NAI grants (and VPL’s 

selection in two separate competitions) 

has provided time for the team to gel and 

produce truly interdisciplinary research, 

and to attract and support a cadre 

of young researchers launching their 

astrobiology careers. The distributed 

nature of the team has encouraged 

its members to stay involved over the 

long term. Colleagues who no longer 

have a formal role still connect from 

far-flung places for team meetings 

and contribute to VPL research.

ASK MAGAZINE | 15
Photo Credit: NASA/Wendy Dolci

remotely made a great diversity of participants and increased 

interactions possible.

Bringing people from different disciplines together is 

not all that’s required. Having a common language and a 

common understanding of multiple fields are key to working 

on interdisciplinary teams. The NAI has experimented with 

various ways to share knowledge across disciplinary boundaries. 

“Primer sessions”—an astronomy class for biologists, for 

example—have been held prior to astrobiology conferences to 

introduce multidisciplinary concepts and terminology. 

Natural cross-training occurs when researchers from various 

disciplines work together, resulting in a new breed of individuals 

who are themselves interdisciplinary. Surveys conducted by NAI 

soon after its formation and again in 2007, asking scientists to 

identify their areas of expertise, show an increasing number 

of scientists calling themselves “astrobiologists.” Furthermore, 

the 2007 survey, which asked for identification of primary, 

secondary, and tertiary disciplines, showed that many NAI 

scientists indicate expertise in multiple fields. 

Working Together Across Distances

The basic NAI tools for remote communication include highdefinition videoconferencing, teleconferences, Web sites, Webmeeting software, online recordings and podcasts, online 

workgroup software, social networking sites, and online 

office tools. In addition, the NAI experiments with hyperwall 

technology, high-speed networks, virtual worlds, and other 

leading-edge technologies to enhance research.

Former NAI Director Baruch Blumberg and members of the NAI Executive Council 

view an image of Mars on the NASA hyperwall at Ames Research Center. 

16 | ASK MAGAZINE
Students in many cases are leaders in the use of 

information technology for science communication, reflecting 

their ease with social networking and other forms of remote 

communication. As part of the 2009 Astrobiology Graduate 

Student Conference, students held a mixed-reality event that 

took place simultaneously in person and in the virtual world 

Second Life. Students gathered in Seattle were able to interact 

with students from Portugal, Greece, Australia, Uruguay, and 

across the United States who otherwise would not have been 

able to participate.

A few management philosophies guide the NAI in its 

use of information technology. One is to offer a suite of tools 

and the expertise in how to use them, and support flexible 

solutions as teams create collaborative environments that 

suit their particular needs. Another is for the NAI’s central 

office to be the first line of support for teams. Problems such 

as a forgotten password or a technical glitch can be barriers 

to success. Having a known and trusted point of contact for 

immediate resolution of problems is critical.

Videoconferencing in particular has seen much 

improvement since the late 1990s, when multipoint 

videoconferencing was fraught with problems and required 

racks of equipment. Today’s videoconferencing solutions are 

reliable, much easier to use, and smaller; the NAI’s highdefinition multipoint controller (used for conferences that 

connect more than a handful of sites) is jokingly referred to 

as “the pizza box” because of its size and shape. Even more 

importantly, modern multipoint controllers come with a Web 

Photo Credit: NASA

Shadows of future astrobiologists.

ASK MAGAZINE | 17
interface that allows users to schedule and manage their own 

conferences. High-definition videoconferencing improves the 

experience, as facial expressions and body language that are 

key to effective communication are much more discernable. 

Space, Slime, and Dinosaurs

Astrobiology has caught on as a way for science educators 

worldwide to engage their learners. Spanning many disciplines, 

it can be applied in many types of classrooms and facilitates 

teaming and problem solving. It is especially relevant to middle 

school–integrated science courses, positively affecting a critical 

age group at risk of turning away from science. Incorporating 

the natural affinity kids have for space, “slime,” and dinosaurs, 

astrobiology has the added appeal of “aliens.” 

When the NAI was founded there were scant educational 

programs and materials to draw from; it had to bootstrap a 

program more or less from scratch. In the early years, the staff 

of the NAI central office took to the road, exhibiting at major 

education and scientific conferences to help educators understand 

the educational value of astrobiology. More recently, education 

and outreach activities have been conducted by the science 

teams, with coordination by the NAI central office. Having a 

close-knit community of science educators that work together as 

a team enables innovation and encourages individuals to draw 

on one another’s expertise and experiences. 

On the Horizon

In the past ten years, tantalizing clues about the potential for 

life in the solar system have been uncovered. NASA missions 

to Mars have found extensive alteration of minerals by liquid 

water, indicating that one essential ingredient for life has been 

present on the red planet. Ground-based observations by NAI 

scientists and their colleagues have revealed that methane gas is 

being generated on Mars and may vary with the season. Since 

methane can be a byproduct of life or be produced by chemical 

means, scientists are hot on the trail of what accounts for it 

on Mars. Farther out in our solar system, liquid water exists 

under the icy crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa and several other 

satellites. Looking beyond our solar system, the current count of 

extrasolar planets is well over four hundred. None of the known 

planets are Earth-like, but the Kepler mission is likely to change 

that. Launched in 2009, Kepler is designed to detect Earth-like 

planets around other stars. It is poised to tell us whether planets 

like ours are run-of-the-mill or rare. So, are we alone? Stay 

tuned. Astrobiologists are working hard to find out. ●

Learn more at astrobiology.nasa.gov/nai.

Carl Pilcher has been director of NAI since 2006. He was a 

professor of astronomy and planetary science at the University 

of Hawaii before moving to NASA Headquarters in 1988, where 

he held a number of management positions in human and robotic 

solar-system exploration and astronomical research.

Ed Goolish, deputy director of NAI, has been with the NAI since 

2000. Prior to that he conducted research at Ames on the biological 

effects of gravity, contributed to the design and development of 

biological research facilities for the International Space Station, 

and was involved in several life-science space missions.

Wendy Dolci is the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) associate 

director for operations and has been with the NAI for seven years. 

Previously, she was a mission director for airborne science 

operations at Ames Research Center. In her current position 

she is responsible for the Institute’s technology infrastructure, 

including Web and collaborative tools. 

High-definition videoconferencing improves the experience, as facial 

expressions and body language that are key to effective communication

are much more discernable.

18 | ASK MAGAZINE
Cohen: Let’s talk about your responsibilities 

and the kind of guidance you got at the 

beginning of your NASA career.

Gerstenmaier: I came to NASA, to Lewis 

[now Glenn Research Center], in 1977 

directly out of school. I was assigned a 

couple of mentors to work with. For me 

it was a great time because the folks who 

wrote my aerodynamics textbooks in 

college were the folks I was working with. 

Because of significant cutbacks, there 

hadn’t been many new people hired, so 

they all treated me like their kid and would 

spend time to educate me on what was 

going on and help me understand what 

I didn’t quite understand in school—I 

could pass the test but I couldn’t quite do 

the real work.

 They assigned me to start doing windtunnel tests right away. I had just come 

out of college and now I’m in charge of 

a multimillion-dollar test facility, with 

maybe seven technicians. For two nights 

I sat with someone else watching them do 

tunnel activities, then I was on my own. 

It was a tremendous responsibility, but a 

tremendously nurturing environment. I 

couldn’t think of a greater place to start 

my career. The folks wanted to make sure 

I really understood; they really challenged 

me. They gave me top-notch tough 

jobs to do and let me work as hard as I 

wanted to. Also, being in testing was very 

good. When you put something in the 

wind tunnel, you did your own analysis, 

putting the probe in if you’re going to 

measure the flow behind the model, for 

example. You had to do your own stress 

calculations, your own safety report. That 

was a scary experience because if this little 

probe breaks off and goes into the turbine 

William Gerstenmaier is NASA’s Associate Administrator 

for Space Operations. In that capacity, he directs the 

agency’s human space exploration and oversees programs 

including the International Space Station and Space Shuttle. 

Don Cohen spoke with him at NASA Headquarters in 

Washington, D.C.

 I nterview W ith

William

Gerstenmaier

By DON COHEN

INSIGHT | ASK MAGAZINE | 19
at the end of the tunnel, I’ll have caused 

a multimillion-dollar mishap. I would do 

all the calculations, then I’d find three 

or four engineers who had done this 

before and say, “Would you make sure 

that I really did this right because I don’t 

want to mess something up?” I had lots 

of responsibility, yet I could really learn. 

So I gained a ton of firsthand experience, 

a lot of detailed engineering stuff, and 

even management skills, managing these 

technicians in the evenings when we were 

running the tunnel, keeping people on 

schedule, keeping things moving.

Cohen: Do recent NASA hires have 

anything like that kind of opportunity?

Gerstenmaier: Today, we have to contract 

out, and things are a little bit slower. At 

Lewis we had a fabrication shop, where 

we made wind-tunnel models, and an 

instrumentation shop, all run by civil 

servants. I didn’t have to contract out to 

procure a piece. I could do a design on 

my desk, take it to the machine shop, 

have it machined that afternoon, and 

have it in the wind tunnel that night. 

In operations today, new engineers can 

go in the control center; they can learn 

from experienced people and get the 

same nurturing that I was able to get. 

NASA still gives us a pretty good chance 

to learn. I think the test environment is a 

great place to start because you get a lot 

of hands-on experience. In school you 

get the academics, you understand the 

theory, the calculations; you understand 

how to run the computer code. When 

you’re actually doing the testing, you get 

to see how it works in the real world.

Cohen: Did you get mentoring in 

management as well as technical 

mentoring?

Gerstenmaier: At the research center, 

the focus was on technical excellence. 

Managing and project management skills 

at that time were not stressed. We were 

pushing the state of the art of technology; 

we were writing peer-reviewed papers. 

In diverse cultural environments, demonstrating a 

capability is more effective than academic proof that

a concept or a device works.

20 | ASK MAGAZINE
The things that were really valued were 

technical excellence and the research 

side. I had a new employee individual 

development plan, much like we do 

today. Each year I got reviewed to make 

sure I was moving forward. I think what 

was even more valuable than the plan 

was the fact that the personnel there took 

an unbelievable amount of time to help 

me learn.

Cohen: What came next in your career?

Gerstenmaier: In 1980, I got called 

by Steve Bales at the Johnson Space 

Center. They wanted someone with 

propulsion experience, which I had from 

Cleveland. I went down to Houston and 

sat on console for the first roughly sixteen 

shuttle flights. I was in the back room for 

the first shuttle flight, STS-1.

Cohen: What was the environment like 

there, compared with Lewis?

Gerstenmaier: Very different. Johnson 

was very competitive; people competed 

to get on console in a certain position. 

Growing and learning happened, but 

you had to do it yourself. I was in a very 

competitive group, the propulsion group. 

I tried to pick areas other people didn’t 

like, so I worked in the thermal area, the 

electrical area, and computer software. 

I got to write a lot of the detailed test 

objectives that were done on the early 

shuttle program to show how the shuttle 

performs in various attitudes, pointing 

at the sun, getting hot and cold. I also 

got to understand how the software 

works to control thrusters and guidance, 

navigation, and control. I did rendezvous 

procedures. I learned a ton in Houston, 

but it was a different kind of learning. 

You had to be more of a self-starter. It 

was a competitive environment that 

forced me to be at the top of my game 

and keep pushing my ability to perform, 

execute, and deliver to new levels. 

Then I became a section head in ’84 or 

’85, in charge of the payload section. We 

were responsible for all the payloads that 

were deployed by the shuttle arm. The 

Hubble Space Telescope, the Spartan 

payloads were managed by our section. 

That was a hard transition, to go from 

the technical world to the management 

world. Frankly, it’s even uncomfortable 

for me today. I still very much like the 

technical stuff, understanding the 

detail of how things work. The softer 

people-management skills are mandatory 

and critical in my job now, but my 

passion is still the technical piece. Then 

I got assigned to a project called the 

Orbital Maneuvering Vehicle project, 

which was to be a space tug that would 

grab things out of geosynchronous 

orbit and bring them down for servicing. 

It was a chance for me to set up 

an entire operations organization 

from scratch. That was a tremendous 

organizational-management experience. 

That then got canceled.

Cohen: I’d like to hear about your space 

station experience.

Gerstenmaier: Initially, it was going to 

be assembled totally on orbit. The truss 

was so long you couldn’t fly it up in 

pieces. That approach got canceled. Then 

we found out because we had shrunk the 

truss size so much, we could fly it up 

in preintegrated pieces. We could build 

trailer-size pieces and plug them together. 

I was in charge of the group that laid out 

all the operations concepts and processes 

to build the station.

Cohen: This was before the Russian 

involvement?

Gerstenmaier: In 1992, I left NASA 

to work on a PhD. That’s when they 

brought the Russians in and space station 

went through another redesign effort to 

bring in the international partners. When 

I came back to NASA, the propulsion 

systems were gone; they’re given to the 

Russians. Some of the attitude control 

systems were given to the Russians, with 

U.S. [responsible for] control-moment 

gyros; some of the life-support systems 

were given to the Russians. But the basic 

concept was there; 90 percent of the 

station was still the same.

Cohen: How did you learn to work with 

the Russians?

Gerstenmaier: I went to Russia in ’95 

and ’96, when Shannon Lucid was on 

Mir. I was her ground person. I was the 

first American to go to Russia as an ops 

lead in charge of her science program 

and stay there for an extended period 

of time. Prior to that, folks would come 

for a couple of weeks, then they would 

go back to the U.S. and another person 

would come. I was the first person that 

stayed the entire time (approximately six 

months). And because I had background 

on shuttle and station and propulsion, I 

wasn’t the typical science person that’s 

fresh out of school. I actually had a lot of 

ASK MAGAZINE | 21
experience in short-duration spaceflight 

that the Russians were not used to seeing. 

I had to negotiate the contract with the 

Russians for the program I was going to 

have to implement—phase 1 operations.

Cohen: Was that a hard negotiation?

Gerstenmaier: It was tremendously hard,

but it was good because I knew what was 

possible and what wasn’t. I got requests 

from the U.S. and NASA to negotiate 

things that were physically not possible, 

like more communication time than 

was available because of the satellites 

and ground stations they have. We 

could never achieve that capability. So I 

immediately took those things out. The 

Russians had never seen anyone who 

would just drop stuff because it’s not 

technically feasible. They weren’t used to 

having someone on the other side of the 

table who was knowledgeable enough. It 

was a hard negotiation, but it was good. 

I got accepted into their control center 

just like a Russian flight controller.

I established a relationship with the 

Russians. They’d be doing a telecon 

with the Americans and I would be 

sitting in the back of the room while the 

Americans were negotiating a position 

with the Russians. And they would 

go to me and say, “This is crazy. You 

know we can’t do this.” I actually got 

to see what a NASA-American looks 

like to a Russian through their cultural 

eyes. Later I became deputy program 

manager for space station, working with 

the same Russians. I know these folks 

personally; I’ve worked with them; I 

lived in their country. They know me. I 

know their culture. 

Cohen: Do you think it should be a 

rule of international cooperation that 

someone actually be there? 

Gerstenmaier: I don’t know that it’s 

mandatory, but you really have to have that 

cultural appreciation because the cultures 

are so different. You either need to be very 

intuitive and perceptive and be able to 

accept and understand those differences 

or you have to have some experience.

Cohen: Are there lessons from space 

station that NASA needs to take to heart?

Gerstenmaier: Cooperation will be 

important in the future. Because of the 

cost and complexity of space missions, it’s 

difficult for any nation to do them alone. 

During Apollo, we got to the moon a lot 

faster because our goal was to beat the 

Russians and show our prowess. Station 

is very different, a cooperative activity. I 

think cooperation will have much-longerlasting results, but it may take longer to 

achieve your goals. Having the Russians 

around after Columbia, when we had no 

ability to transport our own crew to the 

station, kept our crews on station. And 

the Russians learn a lot from us.

Cohen: For instance?

Gerstenmaier: During their spacewalks 

they typically wouldn’t work during the 

night passes because they didn’t have 

lights on their spacesuits. They were able 

to adapt their spacesuits to use our lights. 

We also carry a helmet camera so we can 

see what the astronauts are doing. We’ve 

adapted our helmet camera to work on 

Russian spacesuits so now they use our 

lights and our cameras on spacewalks. We 

use a lot of Russian wire ties: those little 

copper things that tie down cables. We 

have a body-restraint tether which holds 

the spacesuit fixed in one position. The 

Russians are using that now. So there’s 

been a tremendous amount of learning 

on both sides. I think that’s the wave of 

the future.

Cohen: The space station lessons you 

describe are all examples of people 

seeing something in action, not reading 

a report about it.

Gerstenmaier: I think internationally 

that works better. The cultures are so 

different that if I just gave them a report, 

they wouldn’t understand it with the 

same cultural mind-set that I have. But 

when you physically see it work, you see 

it through your own cultural lens and 

your own activity so adaptation and 

absorption are quicker. In diverse cultural 

environments, demonstrating a capability 

is more effective than academic proof that 

a concept or a device works.

Cohen: Maybe the same holds true 

between NASA centers and NASA 

and contractors, which are somewhat 

different culturally.

Gerstenmaier: I agree, because we 

all carry our own biases based on our 

own experiences. But if something 

is demonstrated to you and you can 

perceive it through your own lenses and 

filters, you can judge for yourself whether 

it’s valuable or not.

Also, dependence drives learning: I 

need you to do this component because 

22 | ASK MAGAZINE
I don’t have the resources to do it. That 

builds a much stronger tie. If you have 

your own capability and they have their 

own capability, you can cooperate in 

space but not really get that learning. 

Before Columbia occurred, we used to test 

our own air and water samples on station 

and the Russians did theirs. Russian and 

American air and water specialists didn’t 

have to interact. When we lost Columbia, 

we had no way to return our samples. 

We had to bring our specialists to Russia 

to see how they analyzed air and water. 

That forced a deeper cooperation than 

would have been there if we were not 

interdependent. So when you think 

about doing a project, where you choose 

somebody to be in the critical path or 

where you’re going to be dependent upon 

them needs to be a very strong strategic 

decision because that will drive learning 

and technology. You should consciously 

think about where you put those 

dependencies in. It’s not appropriate for 

you both to have full capability. That’s 

essentially two programs running in 

parallel, which is not effective.

Cohen: From what you’re describing, 

it sounds like you need trust to work 

together, but trust comes from working 

together.

Gerstenmaier: We had almost ten years 

of working with the Russians before 

Columbia. When Columbia occurred, 

we were going to have to use the Soyuz 

on a routine basis. But you couldn’t 

immediately have gone to that dependence 

and interaction without some lower-level, 

non-risky interaction that built confidence 

before the crisis. You almost have to stage 

the relationship such that you learn and 

gain this trust. Now we have a very strong 

relationship with the Russians. We do 

[also] with the Europeans, the Japanese, 

and the Canadians. We can use the space 

station partnership to leverage even more 

challenging, more dependent things 

for exploration as we think about going 

beyond low-Earth orbit.

Cohen: The process you describe—

working together to develop trust, 

facing crises that will make or break the 

relationships—sounds a lot like marriage.

Gerstenmaier: I think that’s life in 

general. In a very stressful situation, that 

external stimulus either drives you closer 

together as a team or you splinter apart. 

The key is to figure out what drives 

people together—people in combat 

situations, people in extremely stressful 

situations—what builds team cohesion 

under challenges, because the challenges 

will come. How do you as a program/

project manager think about how to build 

this underlying environment such that 

... when you think about doing a project, where you

choose somebody to be in the critical path or where

you’re going to be dependent upon them needs to be a

very strong strategic decision because that will drive 

learning and technology.

ASK MAGAZINE | 23
when the stress comes the team actually 

gets driven together?

Cohen: We’re talking a few days before 

the new NASA budget is announced. 

What do you think some of the challenges 

posed by the new budget will be?

Gerstenmaier: What I’ve learned 

throughout my NASA career is that, as 

a program/project manager, you have 

to have some streak of optimism or you 

would have quit a long time ago. You’ve 

got this impossible schedule: you’re 

given three years to build something. 

You can never plan a project totally 

and understand all the details, so 

there has to be something in you that’s 

eternally optimistic. They talk about it 

as “realistic optimism.” Another thing I 

learned from the Russians: they always 

have the goal in mind. They may take 

the most circuitous route to that goal 

you could ever imagine, but they are 

100 percent focused on that goal. 

They are going to get there no matter 

what. So, back to NASA: I don’t know 

exactly what is going to come, but I 

have an optimism that we’re going to do 

something very productive in the future, 

pushing technology, giving challenges 

to students to learn science, technology, 

engineering, and math. I think NASA 

can provide that excitement for students. 

What specific things we’ll be working 

on, I don’t know at this point. We’re 

blessed in this country; we’re given 

a pretty good portion of the budget. 

Even though it’s only seven-tenths of a 

percent, it’s still big compared to what 

other countries get. We have the ability 

to do a lot of technology and explore 

and work with industry. I think we’ve 

got enough tools so that when we’re 

given whatever the plan is, we’ll figure 

out a way to craft a program that will be 

exciting and innovative and invigorating 

for students and other folks in the future. 

I don’t know the specifics, but I’ve been 

through a lot in my thirty years with 

NASA. If you roll with the punches and 

deal with what you’ve got, you can make 

some amazing things.

Cohen: Do you think the NASA spirit has 

been essentially the same over all those 

years?

Gerstenmaier: I think so. Look at 

station. Station is a miracle. At those 

first reviews, when we were looking at 

building the truss in space, I said, “This 

thing is never going to get built.” Then 

we got directed to go preintegrated truss 

and figured out how to do that. Then 

we’re adding the Russians; they’re taking 

away all these critical systems. That 

should be the end of the world; that’s 

never going to work. But now we’ve got 

850,000 lbs. in low-Earth orbit with 

all these international partners; we’ve 

got control centers in Japan, in Russia, 

Europe, and Canada all supporting 

space station. Looking forward, I’d say 

it’s going to look momentarily tough, 

but if you just keep chugging away with 

that perseverance and that little bit of 

optimism, it’s amazing what these teams 

can do at NASA. The folks here are 

phenomenal. We had the external tank 

problem—6,000 dings on the tank—

and they came to me and told me they 

wanted to repair this tank, I thought, 

“No way,” but I saw that spirit in their 

hearts. They said, “We can do this.” Lo 

and behold, they got this tank ready to 

fly and it worked out extremely well. I 

see that same thing now. We’ll be given 

something that looks impossible; that’s 

okay. Dissect it, parse it down into small 

pieces, and we’ll make something out of 

what we get. It’s a good time. ●

24 | ASK MAGAZINE
Photo Credit: NASA

Mariner 10’s first image of Mercury, 

acquired on March 24, 1974.

 NASA Past

and Future: 

 A Personal 

 MemoiR By Ken Randle

When I was working for the Sperry Corporation in the sixties, 

we submitted a proposal to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) 

to provide support for their unmanned space exploration 

programs. Our proposal won and, in July 1966, I took a team 

of twenty-three engineers to JPL. I had two responsibilities: 

manage the team and provide the configuration design of 

spacecraft for the Future Projects Study team.

STORY | ASK MAGAZINE | 25
Exploring the Solar System

The Future Projects Study team, under JPL’s direction, performed 

four six-month feasibility studies for NASA’s consideration. Two 

of them became successful missions—a pretty good record. 

The first study was for a mission to Venus with the release of 

a capsule to the surface before going on to a flyby of Mercury. 

This became the Mariner 10 mission, the first mission to use 

the gravity assist of one planet to reach another planet. This 

was before powerful computers were available, so the trajectory 

analysis was very laborious. I worked on the configuration 

design of the spacecraft, and this work became the basis of my 

master’s thesis at the University of Utah. I had to coordinate 

the different disciplines of propulsion and science, figuring out 

where to place the instruments that would focus on Venus and 

Mercury, plus planning for backup equipment. NASA accepted 

the recommendations of the Future Projects Study team’s 

feasibility study. Mariner 10 was launched on November 3, 

1973, and crossed Mercury’s orbit in March 1974. We didn’t 

know a lot about Mercury then, but we learned fast.

Next, we did a feasibility study of a Venus lander. We enclosed 

a capsule in balsa wood and carried out a successful landing 

test in the Mojave Desert, but the Soviet Union launched the 

Venera 7 spacecraft on August 17, 1970, and landed a capsule 

on Venus on December 15, 1970, which transmitted data for 

twenty-three minutes. So NASA gave up on the idea of funding 

our proposal. The next six-month feasibility study for a project 

that didn’t happen was a plan to send a solar-electric spacecraft 

to Jupiter. The challenge was to fold 1,500 square feet of solar 

panels and package the spacecraft into a Centaur nose cone. We 

made a one-tenth scale model of the solar-electric spacecraft, 

and a picture of the model made the cover of the June 1968 

issue of Aeronautics and Astronautics magazine, published by the 

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). It 

was a worthy project, but it wasn’t funded.

The Future Projects Study team’s next feasibility study was 

for a grand tour of the outer planets, an ambitious idea that 

became the Voyager mission. Back in the sixties, Gary Flandro, a 

JPL employee on the study team, discovered that the alignment 

of the outer planets would make it possible to use a gravity assist 

from Jupiter to go to Saturn and on to Uranus and Neptune. 

The launch had to take place between 1976 and 1979 to take 

advantage of an alignment that occurs only once every 175 years.

For this discovery, Flandro received an award from the British 

Interplanetary Society. The grand tour missions would require 

an entirely new kind of spacecraft, a design with capabilities far 

beyond those of the simple machines that had reached the moon, 

Venus, and Mars. At the time, Voyager was the most complex 

unmanned machine ever designed. There had to be a boom for 

the radioisotope thermoelectric generator, another boom for the 

magnetometer, a planetary astronomy plasma-wave antenna, highgain antenna, location for a plasma detector, cosmic-ray detector, 

low-energy-charged-particle detector, infrared interferometer 

spectrometer and radiometer, and cameras. Voyager would have 

to survive the intense radiation at Jupiter and operate almost 

flawlessly for more than a decade. The new spacecraft would need 

the decision-making capability to detect and react to a variety 

of internal problems, since command times from Earth would 

stretch to hours during the long flight. The reliability challenges 

were far greater than for any other spacecraft ever designed. We 

succeeded even better than we expected. In fact, the two Voyager 

spacecraft are still transmitting data from the outer edge of the 

solar system today, more than three decades after launch. 

Space Exploration Day

To help recognize and celebrate these and other space exploration 

achievements, for the past thirty-five years I have been working 

with J. David Baxter, president of the Utah Space Association, 

to promote Space Exploration Day (July 20) and U.S. Space 

Observance Week (July 16–24), which coincide with the dates 

of the historic liftoff, landing, and return of Apollo 11 in 1969. 

Baxter conceived the idea of a celebration on the anniversary of 

the Apollo 11 mission while he was a junior at East High School 

in Salt Lake City. In 1972, Flandro and I served as advisors to 

help Baxter form the Utah Space Association. 

Senator Frank E. (Ted) Moss of Utah introduced the Senate 

Joint Resolution in Congress in 1976. The Space Exploration 

Day Resolution passed in the Senate as an annual observation, 

but it was amended in the House of Representatives to apply 

for only one year. For my efforts in pushing for recognition of 

the first landing of men on the moon by Apollo 11 and other 

AIAA activities, I was given the Distinguished Service Award 

by AIAA in January 1977. 

In 1984, Senator E. J. (Jake) Garn of Utah introduced a 

Senate Joint Resolution for Space Exploration Day to celebrate 

26 | ASK MAGAZINE
Artist’s concept of the Voyager spacecraft 

with its antenna pointing to Earth.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL

The grand tour missions would require an entirely new kind of spacecraft, 

a design with capabilities far beyond those of the simple machines that

had reached the moon, Venus, and Mars. At the time, Voyager was the most

complex unmanned machine ever designed.

ASK MAGAZINE | 27
the fifteenth anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon. 

It passed both the Senate and House of Representatives 

unanimously. President Reagan invited all the Apollo astronauts 

for a reception at the White House. I also received an invitation. 

It was an exciting opportunity to meet the Apollo 11 astronauts 

as well as many others. After the reception, we were invited into 

the East Room of the White House, where President Reagan 

sat down and signed the Space Exploration Day Proclamation, 

which I had helped get through Congress. It wasn’t easy, as 

we had to get the majority of the Senate and the House as cosponsors. The Apollo 11 astronauts and James Beggs (then 

NASA Administrator) stood behind President Reagan as he 

signed the proclamation. Then, President Reagan gave a talk on 

the importance of space commercialization. From 1981 through 

1989, I had gotten proclamations or Statements of Support from 

all fifty governors plus Puerto Rico as a result of many phone 

calls and letters. Presidential proclamations were obtained 

starting with President Nixon on the fifth anniversary of Apollo 

11 through President Clinton. The power to declare holidays 

and commemorations now lies with the president. Our goal is 

for a presidential order that will permanently establish Space 

Exploration Day as a nonpaid commemorative holiday.

My related efforts over the years have included taking 

four high school students (including Baxter) to the Apollo 17 

launch—the first Apollo night launch. On September 14, 1971, 

as program chair of the Utah section of AIAA, I organized a 

dinner meeting to host the Apollo 15 astronauts, their wives, 

and Dr. James Fletcher (then NASA Administrator). There 

were 786 people in attendance. In October of 1975, as chair 

of the Utah Engineers Council, I coordinated a gathering of 

Apollo and Soyuz astronauts, cosmonauts, and their wives at 

the Hotel Utah in Salt Lake City. My goal has been and is to 

increase public understanding of the value of human spaceflight 

and support for future exploration. The Apollo program was 

expensive, but it has been estimated that, for every dollar spent 

on the Apollo program, the nation has received nine dollars in 

benefits from new technologies. ●

Image Credit: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

June 1968 cover of Aeronautics and Astronautics magazine showing a onetenth-scale model of a solar-electric spacecraft that was never funded.

Ken Randle graduated from the University of Michigan with a BS 

in aeronautical engineering, after which he worked at Douglas Aircraft 

and then the Sperry Corporation. He spent his first year at the Jet 

Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) working on the airframe design of the 

Sergeant Missile System and later helped create a proposal to support 

JPL’s unmanned space programs. Later, he was the engineering 

manager of the Shrike Missile System and held various engineering 

management positions until he retired in December 1986.

28 | ASK MAGAZINE
Title

By 

Intro

Satellites that can fit in a backpack are shrinking technology, reframing satellite science, and providing 

valuable mission training and experience to the next generation of engineers. 

By Haley Stephenson Photo Courtesy Bob Twiggs 

PocketQub femtosatellite being developed by Bob Twiggs at Morehead State University.

STORY | ASK MAGAZINE | 29
They come in sizes small, micro, nano, and pico, with masses 

ranging from 500 kg (small) to 1 kg (pico). Over the past two 

years, global interest has grown rapidly in satellites a fraction of the 

size of Sputnik 1 (a beach ball weighing about 80 kg), which are 

ushering in a new era of missions and engineering opportunities. 

CubeSat, Meet NASA 

A decade ago, two professors concluded that educational satellite 

missions took too long and were too expensive. There had to be 

a better way to do them, thought Jordi Puig-Suari of California 

Polytechnic State University (CalPoly) and Bob Twiggs, then at 

Stanford University. “Education satellites were not performing 

the education tasks well enough,” said Puig-Suari. “They were 

too complex, too large, and we had to change it.” 

The change came when Twiggs went down to a plastics 

store in Mountain View, California. After working on the 

Orbiting Picosatellite Automatic Launcher satellite that carried 

six Klondike-bar-sized picosatellites into space in January 2000, 

Twiggs sought to make picosatellites more cubical to support 

more solar panels. The store had what he needed to bring his 

vision to life: nearly cubical plastic Beanie Baby boxes. “And 

that’s how it came about,” said Twiggs, “modeling with a Beanie 

Baby box, a four-inch cube.” 

Twiggs’s group at Stanford started developing a satellite 

bus—the subsystems that support the satellite—to house 

the picosatellite payload while Puig-Suari’s group at CalPoly 

went about developing a deployment mechanism called the 

Poly Picosatellite Orbital Deployer (P-POD). The result was 

CubeSat, a 10 cm3

 picosatellite weighing 1 kg. Three fully 

autonomous CubeSats can be configured together to form a 

nanosat no larger than a loaf of bread. (Nanosatellites are those 

that are less than 10 kg.) 

Engineers at Ames Research Center started collaborating 

with Twiggs. John Hines, currently the chief technologist of the 

Engineering Directorate at Ames, maintains close relationships 

with the university programs that propelled the NASA Small 

Satellite Program into action. “Our whole nanosat program is 

based on the shoulders of the university nanosatellite activities 

and the CubeSat activities,” said Hines. 

Ames conducted a pilot study, asking scientists to think 

about the kinds of science that could be done on nanosatellite 

platforms. Satellite experiments involving biological specimens 

typically had to be taken into space, brought back to Earth, 

and then analyzed after their return. Miniaturization of analysis 

systems offered an alternative: do everything in space. “The idea 

to analyze and do all of your processing and measurements in 

situ was something that had not been done a lot,” said Hines. 

A partnership developed between Ames and three California 

universities: Stanford developed the satellite buses, CalPoly 

provided the P-POD, and Santa Clara University performed 

the mission operations. After ensuring that the hardware 

under development at the universities met NASA standards for 

spaceflight projects, engineers at Ames began to hone their 

understanding of nanosat capabilities and then push them further. 

Chris Beasley, NASA Ames mechanical engineer, 

places the PRESat payload into a gold press vessel. 

Photo Credit: NASA Ames Research Center/Matt Piccini 

30 | ASK MAGAZINE
Nanosats: Not Toys

Because of their size, the value of nanosats has often been 

overlooked. “Everybody laughed at us,” said Twiggs, laughing. 

“They said, ‘That’s absolutely the dumbest idea we’ve ever heard 

of. Nobody’s ever going to do anything with those toys.’” 

“Four or five years ago,” Hines recalled, “people would pass 

by and look at these things as toys. Now you see [those same 

people] showing how they are building their own and starting 

to have their own programs.” 

University satellites are primarily geared toward education 

and training. For NASA, nanosats offer a low-risk, low-cost, 

low-visibility platform for innovation, as well as the ability to 

use launch vehicles that are not designed for large spacecraft. 

“We’re starting to do real science, real technology validation, 

and risk reduction, and gain flight heritage on new techniques 

and technologies. It’s still a spacecraft, and it’s still a mission,” said 

Hines. “It has every element and every aspect of a large spacecraft, 

just smaller and less expensive and sometimes less complicated. 

But it has all the pieces, all the elements. It’s managed exactly the 

same. We use the same flight project management standards—

7120.5D—that big missions are required to do for all NASA 

missions. You have to go through the whole design, development, 

integration, test, missions operations, and management processes 

just as you would for a full mission.” 

Puig-Suari said that the biggest constraint in the field 

is mind-set, not resources. “People are trying to shrink a big 

spacecraft,” he said, “but if you do it that way, it’s not going to 

work.” He believes the way people think about the capabilities 

of nanosats is shifting. “People will initially say, ‘I cannot put my 

component on that box because my component was designed for 

a big spacecraft,’” explained Puig-Suari, “but now we’re starting 

to have people say, ‘Okay, what can I put inside that box?’” 

Early versions of nanosatellites included Bio NanoSat and 

GeneBox, which carried a variety of organisms and molecules 

such as genes, bacteria, and yeast cells. These nanosatellites 

paved the way for the development of NASA’s first deployable, 

autonomous nanosatellite, GeneSat. “We started to miniaturize 

something that we already thought was impossibly small into 

GeneSat 1 payload assembly with Chris Beasley 

in GeneSat Test and Integration Lab N 240.

Photo Credit: NASA

With their low cost, risk, and visibility, small satellites can offer 

an excellent training opportunity for hands-on learning.

ASK MAGAZINE | 31
something even smaller,” said Hines. GeneSat launched in 

December 2006, taking nanosatellite experiments to a new level 

of visibility in the aerospace community. 

Prepping Gen Y

With a majority of NASA’s engineers currently eligible for 

retirement, the next generation coming up through the ranks has 

a lot to learn before the knowledge of those leaving walks out the 

door. With their low cost, risk, and visibility, small satellites can 

offer an excellent training opportunity for hands-on learning. 

“As a seasoned project manager, I have a responsibility, 

just as my peers did when I joined the agency, to train the next 

generation of space enthusiasts and spacecraft developers,” said 

Mark Boudreaux, project manager of the Fast, Affordable, 

Science, and Technology Satellite Huntsville (FASTSAT-HSV) 

microsatellite at Marshall Space Flight Center. 

Small satellite missions also offer young engineers the 

opportunity to acquire and practice essential engineering 

management skills such as team communication and project 

documentation, regardless of their specific area of expertise. 

“We want to make sure that we’re training those replacements 

to continue the things we worked so hard to get to,” said Hines. 

“You get the discipline of having to see something all the way 

to the finish rather than doing it as a school exercise, doing 

something that you’ve done on paper design and then you’re 

finished,” he said. “You’ve got to make the thing work.” 

At the university level, Puig-Suari sees a noticeable change 

in how students approach their projects. “Interacting with 

industry really puts them in the right mind-set as far as the 

quality levels, level of seriousness, and documentation,” he said. 

“You need to prove that it works, write it up, and show it to the 

right people.” 

Learning from NanoSats

In August 2008, Boudreaux and Hines saw NanoSail-D 

(Marshall) and PRESat (Ames) take off on the third SpaceX 

Falcon 1 from Omelek Island, one of the Marshall Islands in 

the Pacific. The launch vehicle never reached orbit and plunged 

into the Pacific Ocean. 

Despite the launch failure, there were lessons learned. “We 

learned a lot about the integration process,” said Boudreaux, 

noting that this was their first involvement with Falcon. “That 

was a new paradigm for us.” Working with new commercial 

launch providers offered valuable experience. Two years prior to 

the Falcon launch, the Ames team had configured GeneSat to 

launch on the Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Minotaur-1 rocket. 

“We were able to look at different launch-integration 

capabilities, different launch sites, different launch operations, 

different mission and range considerations, as well as [gain 

experience in] deploying a spacecraft and payload to a very, 

very remote launch site,” said Hines. The remote location of 

the SpaceX Falcon launch site tested NASA’s ability to react to a 

launch delay. The launch vehicle was grounded long enough for 

the specimen to expire and forced NASA to replace the living 

specimen inside PRESat. “We got a big operational logistics 

effort under our belt with that as well,” Hines said. 

NanoSail-D in its 

expanded form.

Photo Credit: NASA

32 | ASK MAGAZINE
Photo Credit: NASA 

GeneSat 1 and Mark II P-POD.

The quick turnaround from authority to proceed to launch 

was also notable. Marshall started integrating NanoSail-D into an 

Ames CubeSat in November 2007, delivered the product in April 

2008, and launched the following August. “There were processes 

that we streamlined,” said Boudreaux. “Sometimes these things 

can take years, but this took months, providing valuable insight 

into private-sector processes. We learned a lot about a short, 

tailored, very efficient, fast development process.” 

There were also cross-agency benefits. “Ames transferred 

knowledge to us,” said Boudreaux. “We learned from Ames the 

important elements associated with building a CubeSat.” 

The relatively low cost of the satellites made it possible to 

build backup units. While PRESat and NanoSail-D never made 

it into space, their twins still have a chance. 

Leveling the Playing Field

Before nanosatellites, satellite projects were primarily limited to 

well-funded, established space programs. This is no longer the case. 

Nanosats have opened up space exploration to a wider world. 

The CubeSat program has expanded to South America, Asia, 

Europe, and South Africa. “The playing field has leveled,” said 

Puig-Suari. “A lot of people are doing it.” He cited the launch of 

Colombia’s first satellite, Libertad-1, a 1-kg picosatellite. “Those 

guys were so excited. It was a very simple spacecraft, but it had 

national implications.” 

The Next Wave

Next year, the Department of Defense Space Test Program will 

launch several NASA small satellites, including the Organics 

and/or Organisms Exposure to Orbital Stresses (O/OREOS) 

managed by Ames, and the second NanoSail-D managed by 

Marshall. These nanosatellites will be two of six instruments 

riding on FASTSAT-HSV-1—a spacecraft bus designed to 

carry multiple experiments to low-Earth orbit—which will be 

launched aboard an air force Minotaur-4 launch vehicle from 

Kodiak Island, Alaska. The second NanoSail-D is a proof-ofconcept demonstration of a miniaturized solar sail that Marshall 

hopes to build on a large scale for solving propulsion and space 

travel concerns. “It’s a stepping stone to larger-class technology,” 

said Boudreaux. 

For Ames, nanosats are stepping stones toward a new class 

of missions. O/OREOS will investigate how components of life 

like amino acids respond to radiation and microgravity, one of 

many missions in line for nanosat technology. 

Scientists are starting to get interested. Biologists were 

the first to see the potential, followed by astrobiologists and 

astrophysicists. Now nanosat programs are popping up at 

places like the National Science Foundation, the National 

Reconnaissance Office, and the air force. 

From the National Science Foundation’s space-weather 

nanosats to the Cube50 project, which will launch fifty nanosats 

into the lower thermosphere (dubbed the “ignorosphere” because 

so little is known about it), to the even smaller femtosatellite 

called PocketQub Twiggs is currently developing, the capabilities 

of these satellites are only just emerging. Nanosats are not 

replacements for their larger counterparts; they offer another 

approach to spaceflight. “People started saying, ‘Wait a minute, 

what else can I do with this?’” said Puig-Suari. “And it was just 

a chain reaction at that point.” ●

ASK MAGAZINE | 33
Intro

Cities at night, when viewed from orbit, offer a spectacular display. Although 

this light is a form of pollution that masks our earthly views of starry nights, 

from orbit it is an amazing display that radiates something about who we are 

into space. As crewmembers on the International Space Station, we now have the 

opportunity to observe and study these patterns of light and record what they 

have to tell us in ways that satellites currently cannot. The patterns that surface 

when viewed from orbit show the intersection among geography, technology, 

and culture and are worthy of recording for scientific study as well as for their 

beauty. Perhaps what we learn can even help us minimize these displays and 

once again give us back our starry nights. 

An Orbital Perspective

By Donald Pettit

34 | ASK MAGAZINE | STORY
Typical western U.S. cities, Las 

Vegas (left) and Los Angeles, are 

defined by yellow-orange sodium 

vapor–lit streets in grids. Airport 

runways stand out as dark lines 

where, surprisingly, it is better to 

land an airplane on a dark runway 

than a well-lit one. At the edge 

of town, the lights abruptly fade 

into the surrounding desert. The 

“Strip” in Las Vegas is probably the 

brightest spot on Earth.

ASK MAGAZINE | 35
From orbit, the unaided eye sees incredible detail when looking at cities at night. But capturing 

clear images of cities at night on film has eluded the best efforts of astronauts for years. Details 

on Earth scoot by at an amazing speed of 4.4 miles per second due to orbital motion. Getting 

a daytime picture is hard enough. And to obtain truly sharp images, even during the daytime, 

the camera must be panned to cancel out orbital motion while using the fastest possible shutter 

speed. During an exposure of 1/1000th of a second, 7 meters of Earth motion occurs; the 

resulting image will be less than optimum without this compensating motion.

Obtaining good images of cities at night requires exposures as long as one or two seconds, 

which, with uncompensated orbital motion, would show city lights as streaks. Obtaining 

reasonable images requires one to float over the window and slowly pan the camera while looking 

through the viewfinder to cancel out orbital motion, while to the best of one’s ability, holding 

the camera still in all other axes. Any jitters during this process result in a blurry image. Not 

surprisingly, images of cities at night have been disappointing to those who have taken them 

since they know that they are only a blurry approximation of what is actually seen. 

Living in a space laboratory for six months, you have the time to think about such problems 

and look for solutions. So during my off-duty time, I built an orbital tracking system from 

spare parts found in various nooks on the space station. In one stowage area, I found the old 

and now unused IMAX camera mount (used to film the IMAX movie Space Station) and used 

it as a framework for my tracking system. We no longer had either film or an IMAX camera 

on station, so no one minded my pressing this mount into a different kind of service. The 

mount’s precision gimbal motions could be used to eliminate the effects of orbital motion only 

if a precise and smooth method of panning could be improvised. I mounted a long, threaded 

bolt on the IMAX platform so that it pushed against a plate and smoothly moved the platform 

in one direction when it was rotated. This direction of motion was then aligned with that of 

orbital motion so the mount would pan and cancel out the effects of orbital motion, at least 

long enough for a few exposures. A variable-speed drill driver was used to rotate the bolt; the 

rotation speed, and hence pan rate, could be varied by how far the drill drive’s trigger was 

pulled. I then attached two cameras to the mount, one with a long telephoto lens to act as 

a spotting scope and one with a medium-focal-length lens to take the photograph. Orbital 

36 | ASK MAGAZINE
Two images of Montreal, Canada, taken from the International 

Space Station. The best handheld image is shown on the left, 

and on the right is an image taken with the improvised barn-door 

tracker. Once this technique of operating the barn-door tracker 

was refined, astronauts used it to take images all over Earth. 

The resolution of ground objects in these new images is about 

60 meters, and the current database of cities at night is now at 

about eight thousand, gathered by many crews. 

ASK MAGAZINE | 37
38 | ASK MAGAZINE
motion was canceled by first looking through the spottingscope camera and varying the rate of bolt rotation by squeezing 

the trigger until the image of the city below stood stationary 

on the camera’s focusing screen. Then I took an image with 

the second camera using a cable release. 

We are in the process of merging these astronaut-taken 

images of cities at night with the popular nighttime Earth images 

from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). 

The DMSP images have near-world coverage but at a much 

lower resolution (about 3 kilometers in black and white) than 

the astronaut images now coming from the space station. A joint 

NOAA–NASA satellite under development will be optimized 

to take full-color, high-resolution images of nighttime Earth 

and eventually render this initial astronaut effort obsolete. Such 

is often the course with exploring a frontier. The special eye 

of humans pioneers the initial phase of discovery followed by 

the development of highly specialized machines that result in a 

more complete and better set of collected data. 

The richness of how humanity sprinkles lights across the 

nightscape is striking from orbit. Colored patterns, caught in 

a triangle between technology, geography, and culture, radiate 

into space something about who we are. If the lights are 

mercury vapor, the cities will appear blue-green, while sodium 

vapor will yield yellow-orange. Some cities are dark with bright 

main arteries while others illuminate the whole urban area to an 

extent that matches the “yellow zone” printed on an atlas. After 

living in space for a while, one can quickly tell what part of the 

world one is over simply from the patterns of city lights. While 

considered a form of light pollution and a display that can and 

should be minimized, their orbital appearance is spectacular. 

Cities at night may very well be one of the most beautiful 

unintentional consequences of civilization.

Chicago (left) and Tel Aviv with Jerusalem 

in Israel (facing page, bottom). A grid of 

north–south, east–west streets typifies U.S. 

cities, whereas Europe and the Middle East 

show a tangled pattern of lighting. 

São Paulo, Brazil (facing page, top left), a major 

urban area, shows blue-green (mercury-vapor 

lighting) in the older original town center and 

yellow-orange (sodium vapor) in its newly 

growing borders.

Tokyo (facing page, top right) typifies the 

blue-green lighting of Japan’s major cities. 

The dark spot in the center of town is the 

Emperor's Palace; Narita Airport terminal 

is the bright spot to the east.

ASK MAGAZINE | 39
Antwerp, Belgium (bottom), with Brussels 

at the bottom edge and Milan, Italy (top). 

Spider-web networks of streets typify the 

older European cities. 

El Paso, Texas (facing page, left), bordering 

Juarez, Mexico. El Paso appears with a 

grid of illuminated streets with relatively 

dark areas in between. Juarez displays 

scattered light in an area defining the city 

limits, matching the urban area "yellow zone" 

printed on an atlas. 

The square of the District of Columbia 

(facing page, right) is clearly defined with an 

east–west dark line identifying the National 

Mall with the Capitol seen as a bright spot on 

the east end and the Lincoln Memorial on the 

west. Center is the Washington Monument, 

and the Jefferson Memorial is seen as a spot 

of light on the south side of the bay. 

40 | ASK MAGAZINE
ASK MAGAZINE | 41
Donald Pettit has logged more than 176 days in space 

and over 13 extravehicular activity hours. He lived aboard the 

International Space Station for five and a half months in 2002–

2003 and, in 2008, was a member of the STS-126 crew. 

Many of these images are currently available on the Web for 

download, including a movie and a NASA educational poster 

of cities at night. The following links are good places to find 

more information:

• earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CitiesAtNight/page1.php

• earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=870

• www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/Cities_at_Night_An_

Astronauts_View.html

• www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEiy4zepuVE

• hsfa.jsc.nasa.gov/MISSIONPOSTERS/misc/Cities%20at

%20Night%20%20Front%20Final%20graphics%203-4-09.jpg

• sfa.jsc.nasa.gov/MISSIONPOSTERS/misc/Cities%20at%20

Night%20Poster%20Back%20Final%203-4-09.jpg

Upper left: The improvised tracker placed on the 

US LAB module window. 

Upper right: Donald Pettit using one camera to 

track city lights and taking the image with a second 

camera via a cable release. Amateur astronomers 

will recognize that what was improvised out of 

spare parts on the space station is no more than 

what they have been doing for decades with a 

simple tracking system dubbed a “barn door” 

that consists of two boards, a piano hinge, and 

a manually rotated bolt. The difference between 

handheld images of cities at night and those made 

with the tracking system is striking. 

Bottom: A mosaic from the southern tip of South 

Korea (upper left) to the northern Kyushu coast 

of Japan (lower right). Fishing boats using bright 

Xenon lights are in the sea between South Korea 

and Japan with some lights blurred by sea fog. 

Bright Xenon lights are used at nighttime to lure 

squid into nets.

42 | ASK MAGAZINE
The idea behind NASA’s Centennial Challenges program, 

which offers cash prizes for successful solutions to important 

and clearly defined technical problems, is that innovation 

can come from anywhere. The program originated in 

2003 and its name refers to the centennial of the Wright 

brothers’ historic flight at Kitty Hawk. The inventiveness 

of those two bicycle mechanics is a model of the kind of 

independent, groundbreaking inventiveness the NASA 

program hopes to inspire.

by andrew petro

STORY | ASK MAGAZINE | 43
Opening the door to all interested individuals and groups and 

providing the incentives of prize money and publicity increase 

the chances that valuable new technologies will be developed. As 

part of that openness, we at NASA don’t manage the activities 

of the competitors at all. We set the challenges; teams work on 

their own and show up with their solutions. The Centennial 

Challenges program does not offer awards for good proposals or 

designs; only ideas that have been demonstrated to work in the 

real world receive awards.

Most successful innovations are built on repeated failures 

that show innovators what does not work and point the way 

to what might—failure is an investment in learning. But 

closely monitored budgets and schedules and constant scrutiny 

make it hard for most large organizations, including NASA, 

to tolerate much failure. The small start-ups, academic teams, 

and individuals who enter the challenge competitions can give 

themselves permission to fail, and their failures sometimes lead 

them to valuable new ideas.

Prize competitions are only one of many ways to pursue 

research and development at NASA, and they offer some unique 

features not found in conventional contracts and grants. Prize 

competitors do not only need to meet a given budget, schedule, 

and set of performance requirements. Challenge teams need to 

do things as inexpensively as possible since they are spending 

their own money. They not only need to meet a schedule, they 

need to do things more quickly than their competitors. And they 

not only need to meet the performance requirements, they need 

to exceed them by as large a margin as possible if they expect 

to win a prize. The prize competition ensures that solutions are 

found in a cost-conscious and effective way, and the government 

expends no money at all unless a solution is demonstrated. 

Defining the Challenges

Not all interesting technical problems necessarily make good prize 

challenges. The goals need to be both measurable and relevant 

to present and future NASA missions. Ideally, a challenge should 

involve a technological advancement that is interesting and 

valuable but not on the critical path for any existing program, 

since the outcomes are naturally unpredictable. And they 

must have the right degree of difficulty—achievable, but hard 

enough to require real innovation and be a meaningful advance 

on existing technologies. Technology areas with the potential 

for commercial opportunities are good for challenges since that 

provides an important added incentive to competitors. 

Among the challenges offered so far have been development 

of a new, more flexible spacesuit glove; a reusable rocket that can 

make two successful flights with accurate landings in a fixed time 

period; wireless power transmission; super-strength materials; 

and a regolith excavator that can dig and transport lunar soil. A 

new green aviation challenge under way is to build an aircraft that 

can fly at least 200 miles in less than two hours with an efficiency 

equivalent to 200 passenger-miles per gallon. 

In the 2009 Power Beaming Challenge, creating the 

competition venue was as much of a technical challenge as the 

competition itself. The contest requirement was to drive a robot 

climber up a vertical cable using only power transmitted from 

the ground. In previous years of the competition, a cable was 

suspended from a crane, but that became impractical when 

the target height rose from 100 meters to 1,000 meters. The 

solution was to connect a cable from the ground to a helicopter 

1,300 meters overhead, something that had never been done 

before. After several unsuccessful tests, a scheme was found 

for safely maintaining cable tension, and the result was a stable 

vertical racetrack into the sky. In the end, LaserMotive, a team 

from Seattle, Washington, drove their climber to the top at a 

speed of almost 4 meters per second.

We are currently in the process of choosing some new 

challenges. We have solicited ideas from scientists and engineers 

within NASA and from the public. Almost two hundred ideas 

were submitted, and some of them will be reflected in the new 

prize challenges. In addition to benefiting NASA missions, we are 

also interested in prize challenges that address national and global 

needs such as energy, climate change, health, and education.

Innovation from Anywhere

The winners of the challenges show that innovation comes from 

diverse and sometimes unexpected sources. The first Astronaut 

Glove Challenge was won by Peter Homer, who developed his 

Masten Space 

Systems’ “Xombie” 

vehicle ascending 

during its first flight. Photo Credit: NASA/Tony Landis

44 | ASK MAGAZINE
Photo Credit: California Space Authority/Jamie Foster

The team from Worcester 

Polytechnic Institute 

stands with their excavator 

Moonraker, which won them 

$500,000 in the Regolith 

Excavation Challenge.

ASK MAGAZINE | 45
Andrew Petro is the program executive for the Innovation 

Incubator in the Innovative Partnership Program Office at 

NASA Headquarters. His responsibilities include the Centennial 

Challenges program and several other public–private partnership 

activities. Most recently, before moving to NASA Headquarters, 

he was the Ares launch vehicle integration manager for the 

Mission Operations Directorate at Johnson Space Center.

design working alone at his dining room table in Maine. Homer 

conducted dozens of failed experiments that helped him arrive at 

the winning design. After winning the prize he formed his own 

company to manufacture pressure-suit gloves and related products. 

Another competitor in that challenge, Ted Southern, is a costume 

designer from New York who partnered with a former rival and won 

the second-place prize in the latest astronaut glove competition.

In the first two years of the Regolith Excavation Challenge, 

no team came close to meeting the requirements: to create 

a self-propelled robot that could dig up and dump at least 

150 kilograms of lunar soil into a container in thirty minutes. 

Then, in 2009, three of the twenty-three participating teams 

far surpassed the requirements. The winner of the $500,000 

prize was a team from Worcester Polytechnic Institute led 

by undergraduate Paul Ventimiglia. Their excavator moved 

440 kilograms, almost three times the amount required. 

Many prize competitors are existing small businesses; these 

small companies find that the prize competitions allow them to 

focus their efforts and provide them with visibility and credibility 

not easily attained in fields that are often dominated by large 

corporations. That was the outcome for Armadillo Aerospace, 

based in northern Texas, and Masten Space Systems of Mojave, 

California, the two Lunar Lander Challenge winners. Both 

companies have been recognized nationally as entrepreneurs 

and are pursuing new opportunities with potential commercial 

and government customers.

The Citizen-Inventor

One goal of Centennial Challenges is to help stimulate a stronger 

culture of innovation across the nation. We have seen teams from 

Maine to Hawaii in the competitions. The teams that attack these 

challenges include businesses and university students but also 

groups of garage inventors that even draw family members into 

the quest. Young people who have been part of these hands-on 

efforts at real-world problem solving are obviously attractive to 

future employers and will likely carry on the spirit of innovation. 

Another goal of the program is to push the culture of innovation 

at NASA in a new direction; that is, to cultivate a willingness to 

consider ideas coming from outside our own organizations. That 

kind of openness will strengthen NASA and create a real link 

between the citizen-inventors and their government’s aeronautics 

and space program that will benefit everyone. ●

First-place winner Peter 

Homer demonstrates 

his glove during the 

2009 Astronaut Glove 

Competition.

Photo Credit: NASA

The LaserMotive team prepares 

their climber prior to launching 

on their prize-winning climb.

Photo Credit: NASA

46 | ASK MAGAZINE
Title

By 

Intro

Sharing Knowledge 

About Knowledge

By Don Cohen and Matthew Kohut

NASA’s success depends on how well it 

develops, acquires, and uses knowledge. Its 

complex science and exploration projects 

demand a high level of technical expertise 

and exceptional knowledge of how to get 

work done—that is, how to direct and 

organize the efforts of the people and 

organizations that execute its projects. 

Recognizing the central importance 

of effective knowledge use and 

knowledge sharing across the agency, 

the Academy of Program/Project and 

Engineering Leadership (APPEL) 

held its first knowledge forum in 

Washington, D.C., on October 15, 

2009, bringing together people 

engaged in knowledge work 

at several NASA centers and 

knowledge experts from other 

organizations including MITRE, 

the World Bank, Educational 

Testing Service (ETS), Fluor, 

the Department of Energy, 

Petrobras, and the International 

Centre for Complex Project 

Management. 

INSIGHT | ASK MAGAZINE | 47
The daylong discussion was organized around three panels 

that explored, respectively, knowledge strategy, knowledge 

effectiveness, and knowledge at NASA. Panelists’ presentations 

were limited to fifteen minutes each to ensure time for 

knowledge-sharing conversations. 

Knowledge Strategy: Doing the Right Thing

Northeastern University Professor Michael Zack, moderator of 

the first panel, defined knowledge strategy as “doing the right 

thing.” In the early days of knowledge management, many 

organizations tried to make as much knowledge as possible 

available to as many people as possible, but that kind of broad 

approach rarely, if ever, produced the hoped-for benefits. A 

knowledge strategy identifies the particular areas of knowledge 

needed to help the organization reach specific goals and 

sometimes defines new goals that the organization’s knowledge 

makes achievable. (Zack used the Polaroid Corporation as an 

example of a company that failed to capitalize on knowledge that 

could have led it in a new, profitable direction: the knowledge 

of the people at Polaroid who understood digital imaging was 

never put to use.) The SWOT strategic-planning method 

(analyzing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) 

can be applied to organizational knowledge to determine the 

kinds of knowledge the organization should acquire, strengthen, 

share, and use. 

T. J. Elliott of ETS reinforced the importance of what he 

called “knowledge intention”—having clear, convincing goals 

for knowledge efforts. Without a specific purpose, he said, 

online communities designed to share knowledge become 

“ghost towns.” 

Klaus Tilmes, advisor to the World Bank’s Knowledge 

Strategy Group, agreed that the key question is “what 

knowledge do we need to achieve our goals?” One of the ways 

to answer the question, he suggested, was to look at levels of 

dissatisfaction among knowledge workers. The aspects of 

their work that thwarted or frustrated them were likely targets 

of efforts to make needed knowledge available. According to 

Tilmes, organizations need both good internal networks (to 

understand what knowledge resources exist) and external 

networks (to understand opportunities and threats) to be able to 

define valuable new goals. He cautioned, though, that gaining 

understanding is only half the battle. What leaders and decision 

makers listen to—and act on—is obviously critical, and they 

sometimes fail to heed important knowledge. It may be true 

that, in some circumstances, knowledge is power, but too often 

power trumps knowledge. 

Knowledge Effectiveness: Doing Things Right

Moderating the second panel, Laurence Prusak, editor-in-chief of 

ASK Magazine, emphasized the complexity of knowledge, which, 

unlike data and information, cannot be readily packaged and 

shipped. Understanding that fact is critical to understanding how 

to create, exchange, and use knowledge effectively. The knowledge 

strategy discussion made clear the close connection between a 

sound knowledge strategy and knowledge effectiveness: having 

a clear, productive purpose is one of the essential elements of an 

effective knowledge program. People share and seek knowledge 

only when they see the value of doing so. Even with a clear 

knowledge strategy in place, however, other factors influence the 

effectiveness of knowledge work. 

Jean Tatalias, director of Knowledge Services at MITRE, 

talked about the key role “connectedness” plays in successful 

knowledge work. The powerful, often informal social 

connections among people in organizations are an essential 

mechanism for knowledge exchange. The trust, understanding, 

and mutual goodwill that characterize these relationships 

make the sharing of expertise possible. MITRE supports 

various kinds of connectedness. An information-technology 

system that includes documents and contact information about 

experts increases the “findability” of knowledge. Frequent 

technical-exchange meetings and collaboration on projects 

foster knowledge sharing and strengthen personal networks. 

48 | ASK MAGAZINE
Tatalias also mentioned the relationship between organizational 

culture and knowledge effectiveness. She believes that MITRE’s 

mission-oriented, not-for-profit culture encourages people to 

share what they know and seek the knowledge they need. 

To carry out its large engineering and construction projects, 

Fluor works to share knowledge across projects as well as within 

large, often geographically dispersed project teams. John 

McQuary, vice president of the Technologies and Strategies 

Organization at Fluor, described the company’s investment 

in communities of practice and other knowledge endeavors to 

ensure that the knowledge of some 3,500 subject-matter experts 

in 1,000 areas is preserved and made available when and where 

it is needed. The company’s leadership actively supports the 

communities and their Web sites with resources and public 

recognition of outstanding contributions to knowledge sharing. 

McQuary says that Fluor also “puts people side by side for a 

number of years” to ensure the transfer of expertise. A subjectmatter-expert protégé program has a similar goal. Typically, 

the protégés are not immediate successors in a given role, but 

younger employees who will carry the expertise into the future. 

Alexandre Korowajczuk, corporate knowledge manager 

for Petrobras, described how the Brazilian oil company uses 

storytelling to communicate the organization’s values to its 

flood of new hires. The storytelling sessions that bring together 

veterans and newcomers convey some “how-to” knowledge about 

oil exploration and drilling, but their most important content is 

emotional, expressing the commitment and determination of 

Petrobras employees. Like MITRE (and NASA), knowledge 

sharing at Petrobras benefits from a sense of mission, in this 

case an awareness of the importance of the company to Brazil’s 

economic, social, and environmental well-being. (See “Petrobras 

and the Power of Stories,” p. 54.)

Knowledge at NASA

Don Cohen, managing editor of ASK Magazine, moderated a 

panel of practitioners engaged in knowledge work at NASA. He 

noted that no large organization is one thing—it has different 

kinds of characteristics in different places—and asked if NASA’s 

centers can be expected to foster knowledge development 

and sharing in the same ways despite differences in culture, 

organization, and technical expertise. 

Manson Yew, manager of the NASA Engineering Network 

(NEN), discussed efforts to build online communities of 

practice for engineering discipline areas that connect engineers 

across the agency who would not necessarily work together. The 

NEN focuses on twenty-five key engineering disciplines with 

the goal of connecting engineers to sources of both explicit and 

tacit knowledge across the agency. 

Dave Lengyel, risk and knowledge management officer for 

the NASA Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, said that 

technology is not the problem with knowledge sharing. Like 

MITRE’s Tatalias and Fluor’s McQuary, he believes the key is 

building a community. He discussed the DART (Demonstration 

of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology) mission as a NASA 

case study of a knowledge and communication failure. 

APPEL Director Ed Hoffman noted that APPEL addresses 

the question of how to develop competence, particularly in the 

absence of certainty. He pointed out that performance happens 

at the team level in a project-based organization like NASA, 

and said that organizational sustainability was a large focus of 

APPEL’s knowledge-sharing effort since project teams often 

don’t have the time or resources to connect with one another. 

Given the unique nature of NASA’s missions, knowledge sharing 

is also a means of preserving the agency’s legacy. ●

The knowledge strategy discussion 

made clear the close connection 

between a sound knowledge strategy 

and knowledge effectiveness: having 

a clear, productive purpose is one 

of the essential elements of an 

effective knowledge program.

ASK MAGAZINE | 49
NextGen: Preparing 

 for More Crowded Skies

 By Kerry Ellis

There’s one word travelers never want to hear when checking in for their flights: delayed. “Delayed” 

can cause frequent flyers to clench their suitcase handles that much tighter, because it can lead to 

the even more treacherous “canceled.” Air travel delays are common these days, but we might have 

it better than we realize. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has forecast that airspace 

operations could triple in the next two decades. If delays are bad now, how much worse will they be 

in 2025? Maybe not at all, if NASA succeeds in helping the Interagency Joint Planning Development 

Office (JPDO) prepare for the Next Generation (NextGen) Air Transportation System.

50 | ASK MAGAZINE | INSIGHT
After the JPDO defined more than one hundred research 

objectives that would help handle increased airspace operations, 

NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate identified 

areas where the agency’s expertise and facilities could 

contribute. NASA is working alongside the FAA, Department 

of Transportation, Department of Defense, Department of 

Homeland Security, Department of Commerce, the White 

House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the Office 

of the Director of National Intelligence to prepare the airspace 

transportation system for the anticipated future demands.

One of the research activities NASA is heading is the 

NextGen Concepts and Technology Development (previously 

known as NextGen Airspace), which is looking into how, 

when, and to what extent automation can be applied to moving 

aircraft within the national airspace. Currently, the system 

relies on manual monitoring, with air traffic controllers on the 

ground analyzing displays and directing pilots to make flightpath adjustments through radio systems. According to NASA’s 

NextGen Plan, human controllers’ cognitive ability limits their 

capability to handle more than about fifteen aircraft. Ames 

Research Center and Langley Research Center are working 

together and with industry and university researchers to 

develop, test, and demonstrate techniques and technologies 

that will introduce some automation to areas such as trajectory 

prediction, traffic flow management, and separation assurance 

in an effort to increase this capacity as well as reduce the time it 

takes to safely move aircraft through the system. 

Managing a research effort this large and long-running 

comes with unique challenges. Setting milestones, determining 

and reducing risks, and tracking progress entail different 

approaches than NASA projects that have a predetermined 

launch window or require building a physical piece of hardware 

that can be handed off after completion.

Managing Research

Instead of a launch project’s satellite or rover, NASA research 

projects may deliver an algorithm, a user interface or display, or 

software. Even thinking in terms of an “end product” can be 

deceptive, as a resulting bit of software can always be changed or 

updated. “No researcher ever thinks their work is done. Period,” 

said Harry Swenson, who was the principal investigator for 

NextGen until 2008. 

“That causes its own problems when trying to obtain 

progress reports on milestones,” explained Mike Landis, who 

was the project manager for NextGen until his retirement in 

January 2010. 

“You put out milestones and markers and ask someone to 

report, and they say, ‘I’m not done yet,’” Swenson said. “What 

you’re reporting on in research is progress. But researchers think 

if they report on it, it’s done, and it isn’t done. I’ve learned from 

project management principles that sometimes good enough 

is good enough. And that’s a continuous challenge in project 

management of research and development activities,” he added. 

It takes convincing to assure those conducting the research that 

delivering a status report does not mean what they’re working 

on is finished. 

Managing the cost for research projects can also present 

challenges. Ensuring that people are available in time for testing 

new displays, for example, can pose a risk to the timeline that 

then impacts the budget. Instead of worrying about pieces of 

hardware fitting together and operating correctly—an inflexible 

requirement—project managers of research efforts have more 

... a research project like NextGen

must continually adapt to essential 

elements not under its control, like

changes in flight-controller display 

hardware and the work schedules

of active FAA flight controllers

needed to test equipment.

ASK MAGAZINE | 51
flexibility in moving resources around to avoid risk, and the 

ultimate result can be different from the original plan. 

“If we see that our hypothesis is not going to give us the data 

that we need, and the simulation proves that our hypothesis, in 

fact, was not correct, that’s just part of the process,” explained 

Landis. “That doesn’t mean that we failed; it means that we just 

need to look at a different way of creating a display, or a different 

procedure that is less labor intensive for a flight crew or an air 

traffic controller. With the research work that we’re doing, we 

have more flexibility in our milestone schedule, among other 

things,” he said.

“There are risks and trades you have to make, but there 

aren’t as many hard schedule items,” added Swenson. “A lot of 

the work you’re doing is breaking down the barriers of knowledge 

in a continuous fashion.”

The human interaction element is more dynamic in 

research, as the way data is input or displayed is determined by 

how well people can understand and use the resulting interface. 

Introducing more automation into air traffic management 

does not eliminate human flight controllers from the system, 

so ensuring that people can successfully use and adapt to new 

displays and ways of inputting data is crucial. 

“What’s the best way to ensure that you capture input 

from the users who are going to use a particular display in air 

traffic control? They have to understand what the objective is 

of a particular display that they’re going to see on their console, 

or a procedure that they are going to use in concert with the 

procedure that a flight crew is going to use,” said Landis. 

While research goals can be more flexible, milestones are 

still set and worked toward. For example, if a research goal is 

to improve the merging and spacing of aircraft during final 

approach to an airport, one milestone might be to perform finalapproach simulations with active pilots and controllers in 2011. 

But to achieve that milestone, the scenarios for the simulation 

need to be developed well ahead of time. Part of the project 

manager’s role is ensuring the scenario development work begins 

early enough, which could be years in advance.

There’s still a risk that trained pilots and controllers will 

be unavailable on planned testing days. “They may not be 

available,” explained Landis, “so we may need to use retired 

controllers, and that reduces the level of fidelity and reliability 

because the retired controller may not have managed or done 

air traffic controlling for four or five years.” Risk mitigation, 

in this case, could include slipping the milestone a few months 

until FAA controllers are available, or reducing the technology 

requirement level of that milestone because the input won’t be 

from an active controller. 

“There’s just more flexibility in this type of research than, 

say, NASA needing a satellite that will orbit Mars for two years 

and then release a probe that will land on the Martian surface 

and collect a sample and analyze it, then through telemetry send 

data back up to the orbiting satellite, which in turn will then 

send the data down to the station at Johnson Space Center, or 

Goddard,” said Landis. “For that, you’ve got very rigid specs 

that you have to follow. You’ve got a very structured and rigid 

schedule. Fortunately, we don’t have to worry about that.” 

For all their complexity, NASA flight projects at least have 

the clear goal of producing hardware for a specific purpose. 

Research projects are more amorphous. And a research project 

like NextGen must continually adapt to essential elements 

not under its control, like changes in flight-controller display 

hardware and the work schedules of active FAA flight controllers 

needed to test equipment.

Sharing What’s Learned

With efforts such as NextGen taking five, ten, or fifteen years, 

constant communication among everyone involved—including 

repeatedly defending a proof of concept to stakeholders—

is crucial. According to Landis, “Real estate agents talk 

about location, location, location. From a project manager’s 

perspective, it’s communicate, communicate, communicate. 

It’s not just sending an e-mail out, it’s sitting down with 

the line management and researchers, understanding their 

requirements, and ensuring they have the resources they 

need to execute our plan.” Because the researchers are not 

collocated, communication includes daily phone calls, faceto-face meetings weekly and sometimes daily, and annual 

technical-interchange meetings.

52 | ASK MAGAZINE
Because the researchers are not collocated, communication includes

daily phone calls, face-to-face meetings weekly and sometimes daily, 

and annual technical-interchange meetings.

“At our most recent technical-interchange meeting, we had 

roughly 250 people in attendance and about eighty research 

papers presented on around twenty themes,” said Landis. 

The research and understanding gained by these efforts 

doesn’t end at an internal meeting.

NASA has a responsibility, determined by the Space Act 

of 1958, to disseminate information about its activities and any 

associated results. The NextGen project takes this to heart, 

publishing research papers, technical reports, and peer-reviewed 

journal articles. Researchers from the project also present what 

they’ve learned at forums, such as those hosted by the American 

Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

“Knowledge dissemination is one of our number-one 

requirements,” said Landis. “The past three years, we’ve 

published more than one hundred research papers on average 

annually, and we publish a CD with those reports at the end of 

each year.” The project is also in the process of creating a Web 

site to make the reports more readily available to the public.

With so much information about NASA research available, 

it might be tough to imagine how any of it makes the transition 

from pure research to something that’s deployed on a national 

level. “The hard part, as a researcher or scientist,” said Swenson, 

“is going from trying to figure out principles to helping develop a 

product. It’s a big transition. Your basic mathematical ideas have 

now turned into software, that software turns into an interface, 

and it takes in data. You assume one thing of the data, and it 

changes, so you have to redesign, implement, and deploy while 

adding other ‘ilities’: maintainability, survivability; the functions 

that make it easy to maintain long after the researcher has left.” 

Flexibility and adaptability are among those functions, 

allowing different stakeholders to implement the same research 

in different ways. The possibilities of what NASA’s research can 

do for the future of aeronautics seem nearly endless because one 

piece of research can be adapted to several different environments. 

It’s up to the stakeholders to determine how they’d like to use 

and implement it, or change it to fit their needs. 

“We work with our stakeholders and we show them these 

great things, and they say, can I have two?” said Swenson. 

“That’s often a challenge for those of us who are in research. 

Communicating that our real product is the generation of 

knowledge and reducing technological risks through research 

results and technical papers is key so major system developers can 

actually implement these concepts, ideas, algorithms, software, or 

technology in the real system. But still the pressure is there that 

unless it is actually operating in the air traffic control system or on 

a fleet of commercial aircraft that you are not successful.”

NASA has been very successful in its research, and the agency 

has helped implement its research into stakeholders’ systems. It 

takes time to transition from a well-tested idea to a fully deployable 

product, which is why the NextGen project is already under way. 

To be ready to contribute to the NextGen Air Transportation 

System in 2025, a lot needs to be accomplished now so the ideas 

can evolve and be embodied in technology and practice.

“This work is something that just about anyone can relate 

to. Anyone that’s ever gotten on a flight from Dulles to San 

Francisco, or flown out on vacation or work, you’ve probably 

experienced flight delays,” said Landis. “You can relate to what 

we’re doing and the problems that we’re trying to solve. And 

it’s very human-focused because you’ve got air traffic controllers 

that safely manage aircraft, you’ve got flight crews that safely fly 

aircraft, you’ve got people and cargo flying on these airplanes, 

and just about anyone can relate to what we are doing. Obviously 

it’s a challenge, but it’s very rewarding work.” ●

ASK MAGAZINE | 53
Title

By 

Intro

Urucu Operational Center.

Petrobras and the

Power of stories

By Alexandre Korowajczuk and Andrea Coelho Farias Almeida

54 | ASK MAGAZINE | STORY
One afternoon in October 1986, after more 

than thirty years searching for petroleum in 

the Amazon region, we were drilling the last 

authorized well in the Urucu region.There was 

tension in the air. Finally, the petroleum gushed, 

and whoops of excitement reverberated round 

the small camp. This discovery rewarded the 

persistence of geologists and geophysicists who 

had believed, all along, in finding oil, based on 

a geological model developed for the region. 

They had made the dream come true of 

finding petroleum in the Amazon region.

The challenge, following the discovery, was 

how we would produce oil in such a sensitive 

environment as the Amazon rainforest. We 

had great expertise in finding, extracting, 

transporting, and refining petroleum, but that 

environment was a totally new challenge. We 

summoned a group of scientists, specialists in 

the Amazon region, to guide how to develop our 

project with the least environmental impact. We 

presented our project to them, took them to 

the production site. They gave us a series of 

recommendations that became known as “The 

Manaus Charter.” This basically was guidelines 

setting out what we had to observe during the 

project development. That decision to summon 

those scientists brought an enormous benefit 

to the project, because today our project is 

internationally recognized as an example of 

social and environmental responsibility.

Photo courtesy Petrobras

ASK MAGAZINE | 55
Bu

fl

h

le

 

The objective of this 

robot is to collect 

environmental information 

from a wide range of 

complex Amazon regions, 

technology developed by 

the Petrobras robotics 

laboratory (CENPES).

Photo courtesy Petrobras

I heard this story in 2005, when I visited the Urucu region in 

the middle of the Amazon rainforest. Despite having, at that 

time, twenty-five years with Petrobras, the past fifteen in 

managerial functions, I had no knowledge of these interesting 

and important aspects of this project. The visit and the stories 

motivated me to deepen my own knowledge and to promote 

knowledge dissemination throughout the company. The young 

team who accompanied me on that Urucu visit, all with less 

than three years at Petrobras, suddenly had access to managers, 

field coordinators, and operators of the Urucu project. They 

became more motivated, interested, and knowledgeable in this 

innovative project. 

Following the Urucu visit, we agreed that we would develop 

a robust method for disseminating lessons learned during 

important company projects. Learning from the past would 

prepare for the future. 

Petrobras

Petrobras is a Brazilian integrated-energy company operating 

in more than twenty-seven countries. It has a tradition of 

overcoming project challenges. Its project environments have 

become more technically complex, from exploring and producing 

oil and gas onshore and in shallow waters, to deep water 

(2,000 meters) and now ultra-deep water (7,000 meters), with 

the pre-salt layer discoveries. These high-risk projects demand 

innovative solutions using leading-edge technology. The projects 

have to consider not only the proximal environment but also 

the social impact on communities—those near the production 

facilities and those along the pipeline infrastructure. All this 

complexity demands project team excellence at a time when we 

face the imminent retirement of our most experienced staff and 

the recruitment of about 25,000 new employees. In addition, 

our strategic plan foresees doubling our oil and gas production 

capacity and a major investment in alternative energy, such as 

biofuels, over the next ten years.

We will need the knowledge developed during the fiftyseven years of company history and what we learn in the future 

to achieve our business objectives and adapt to the higher speed 

of decision making in an increasingly complex political and 

economic environment.

The Hidden Objective of Lessons Learned 

Explicit knowledge, most frequently related to technical and 

operational aspects, can be registered and disseminated through 

documents in various media. But understanding the many risks 

and uncertainties associated with project execution requires a 

different approach. This knowledge can only be disseminated 

through interaction among employees who build together an 

understanding of implications of the knowledge and the context 

in which it was developed. When dealing with employees with 

similar experience, we focus on fine-tuning their skills. With 

new employees, the focus has to be on developing and integrating 

their skills into the context of the company’s activities. To 

illustrate how we can merge these demands, let me tell the story 

of a lessons-learned workshop that I attended at the end of an 

important project.

During an oil refinery major-revamp 

project, some unpredicted events 

affected the cost and project schedule. 

To identify the causes, a lessons-learned 

workshop was organized with the main 

project participants, most of whom 

had coincidently worked on its original 

construction twenty years earlier. 

The knowledge management manager 

related to this project asked why no 

new employees had been invited and was 

told none of them had participated in 

56 | ASK MAGAZINE
ut one of t

floor and commented that their p

had been extremely beneficial as they ha

earned a lot during the discussions. Th

 had particularly enjoyed listening to th

stories about the problems and had gain

a better understanding of the risks an

uncertainties associated with project ch

All this complexity demands project team excellence at a time when

we face the imminent retirement of our most experienced staff and the

recruitment of about 25,000 new employees.

the project and they had no practical 

experience. But he insisted and two new 

employees were invited, on the condition 

they would be only spectators. After 

several meetings over the course of two 

weeks, the main conclusions about the 

causes of the cost and schedule problems 

were presented at the final meeting. 

Because the reasons were already known 

in some way by the experts, they felt the 

workshop had been a waste of their time. 

But one of the new employees took 

the floor and commented that their 

participation had been extremely beneficial 

as they had learned a lot during the 

discussions. They had particularly enjoyed 

listening to the stories about the problems 

and had gained a better understanding 

of the risks and uncertainties associated 

with project changes. He ended by 

commenting that most of the workshop 

participants had had the opportunity to 

learn from the revamp and even from 

the original refinery construction, but 

they were approaching retirement and 

the new employees would be taking over 

the responsibility for this and future 

refinery projects. 

After a short silence, the veterans came 

round to the conclusion that one hidden 

objective of a lessons-learned workshop 

was not just to extract technical lessons 

learned, but to develop new employee skills 

through the dissemination of knowledge 

and experience gained during important 

projects. These veterans understood 

that they needed to have more time 

to interact with the younger employees, 

because not only were they going to 

teach them, but they would also have 

an opportunity to learn with them 

during future project work.

Building the “Petrobras Challenges” Program 

In 2003, the “Memories of Petrobras” project was launched as 

part of Petrobras’s fiftieth anniversary celebration. The objective 

was to recover company history from the employees’ point of 

view, hearing their career stories and stories of their families and 

the communities that interacted with the company. This project 

gave voice to the “other side of the story”—not just the company’s 

view. This project helped veteran employees recover the memory 

of their work experience and gave new employees a sense of the 

real-life challenges of project work and a better understanding of 

company culture. “Memories of Petrobras” helped shape what 

became the “Petrobras Challenges” program to use storytelling 

to communicate essential knowledge to new employees.

We initially defined three aims for this new program: 

1. Develop a systemic vision of the studied project to focus 

on events that presented important moments of reflection 

and changes to solve problems.

ASK MAGAZINE | 57
hese veterans understood t

needed to have more time to interact 

with the younger employees, because not 

only were they going to teach them, but 

they would also have an opportunity to 

learn with them during future project 

work. 2. Use interaction among employees who worked on the 

project and employees who are studying the project.

3. Prepare new project managers for decision making in 

complex environments.

The Urucu Project of the discovery, production, and 

transportation of oil and gas in the Amazon region was used 

as a pilot for program construction. During the recording of 

the stories by the main project “actors,” it became clear that the 

challenges that arose during project execution were the most 

important learning opportunity, demanding a lot of reflection 

and elaboration of alternatives. 

To record and disseminate knowledge about an important 

project, we developed this methodology:

1. Development of a timeline divided into three parts: 

a. Prior to the project beginning, describing the context 

that surrounded project creation

b. The project trajectory, focusing on the decision and 

change moments/events

c. The project future, its continuation or the vision of 

the future execution of equivalent projects

2. Descriptions of project changes along the timeline in the 

form of text case studies, based on stories from the main 

actors for each important aspect of the project.

3. Construction of a video based on stories obtained from 

the project actors, to better understand the project 

context.

4. Workshops for project case studies, using the text case 

studies and video with the project stories.

The pilot project concluded with a one-day workshop 

that included discussion of the previously read case-study 

text, organized by theme (for example, project management, 

innovation, logistics, partnerships, social responsibility); video 

presentation of project stories; a “Coffee with Energy” panel 

with the participation of two project actors; and discussion of 

lessons learned and future project development.

The “Coffee with Energy” panel exceeded our expectations. 

The two important project actors in the case studies were employees 

with more than twenty years of company experience and are today 

important technical consultants or business managers. Most of 

the workshop participants were employees with between one and 

five years’ experience. The participants raised issues related to the 

case study that the actors answered in an informal way, creating 

an extremely friendly and trustworthy climate. 

The new employees’ satisfaction was clear from the 

attention they gave to the experienced employees; the veterans 

were gratified by the new employees’ interest. The “Petrobras 

Challenges” program effectively transmitted company culture 

and values to the new employees that were implicit in the stories 

and expanded on in the workshop program. 

So far the “Petrobras Challenges” program has developed 

four case studies of important projects. Workshops were held in 

Rio de Janeiro and Manaus in Brazil and in Bogotá, Colombia. 

The “Petrobras Challenges” program methodology is expected 

to be employed by the Petrobras Corporate University beginning 

in 2011. 

The Power of Stories

I will give the last word to Librarian Andrea Coelho Farias 

Almeida, the person responsible for the “Petrobras Challenges” 

program, who is herself one of the 25,000 new employees 

recruited by the company in the past five years. Her experience 

demonstrates the power of stories.

Right from the start, our objective 

was to contribute to the decisionmaking quality of Petrobras leadership 

in an environment marked by profound 

changes, including the increasing 

58 | ASK MAGAZINE
importance of sustainability. The 

thought that we could contribute to a 

more effective decision-making process, 

enabling our leaders to anticipate new 

business needs, preparing Petrobras 

for the future, affected me strongly.

The idea that I would work with lots 

of senior employees was a bit daunting. 

Naturally, I was not part of their 

relationship networks, having only worked 

for Petrobras three years at that time. 

But because we were aiming to transfer 

knowledge from these executives, I felt 

that the organization was conceding me 

the opportunity to access the company’s 

precious gold, on condition of sharing it 

with all the other Petrobras employees. I 

was fascinated by the idea that I would 

have the privilege of hearing the stories 

of the experiences of these executives 

and senior specialists, and the challenges 

they had faced. 

The acquisition of this knowledge gave 

me the confidence to develop my work. 

In some situations I felt that I was one 

of the few people to know about certain 

events and this awoke in me a feeling of 

urgency. It felt vital that the practices 

we had developed be disseminated and 

the knowledge incorporated into the 

organization—there was so much hidden 

treasure. Also, my manager witnessed 

the surprise of the executives when 

they discovered that I had been with the 

company so short a time. Being exposed 

to that knowledge and experience contributed 

to my professional maturity. ●

Andrea Coelho Farias Almeida is a librarian archivist, 

formed by Federal University of Bahia, and specializes in project 

management by the Foundation Getúlio Vargas. For more than 

six years she has worked to transfer knowledge throughout 

Petrobras, and she is responsible for the “Petrobras Challenges” 

program, which is based on storytelling and case studies.

Alexandre Korowajczuk graduated with a degree 

in electronic engineering in 1975 and has been working for 

Petrobras since 1978. For the past seven years, he has been 

working as the manager of Corporate Knowledge Management, 

located in Development of Management Systems Unit at 

Petrobras Headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

ASK MAGAZINE | 59
I am a project risk analyst/manager with experience analyzing 

the cost and schedule risk of large, complex projects in many 

industries. My associates and I have been assigned to do the 

risk analysis in support of the solid rocket booster for the 

Ares launch vehicle and support Constellation risk analysis 

by NASA’s Independent Program Assessment Office. Perhaps 

my experience in these engagements and other industries (oil 

and gas, construction) can help put the issues you raise in a 

positive context.

I often see what you describe. Project teams may develop 

a plan early on with incomplete information; then that plan 

becomes engraved in stone. Alternatively, the team is given 

parameters by management that force the team to come up with 

a plan they do not believe in. At some point, a risk analysis may 

reveal the plan’s flaws.

What can be done when an honest analysis predicts an 

overrun of months or years over the (unrealistic) baseline 

schedule if the project continues its plan and cost, related to 

schedule, is also driven up?

Project managers react to this “bad news” in several ways, 

some productive and some not:

• The results must be incorrect. We cannot possibly be that 

far off our target schedule. We will thank the analyst but 

toss the report into the trash and stick to our plan.

• The results may be correct, but we cannot do anything 

about it. The plan has been accepted and any deviation 

will not be welcomed by management. We should inform 

management of the new targets from the risk analysis and 

work to those.

• The results are correct and show two things: how much 

we will be late and overbudget if we continue on our 

current path, and which risks are most responsible for 

driving us off our target. The project team should use 

the results as a tool and conduct risk-mitigation exercises, 

improving the project plan by attacking the high-priority 

risks first. 

This last is the most mature and productive approach, but I 

have certainly experienced all three.

Mitigating schedule risk often costs money, and NASA 

management needs to be willing to trade off these two important 

objectives. Fully mitigating risk is usually not possible, but I 

have seen projects bring a predicted twelve-month slip back to a 

two- to three-month slip when schedule risk-mitigation actions 

are approved and implemented. This schedule saving may 

actually reduce contingency costs that were driven up by the 

initial schedule slip.

Pessimism about the current plan may be quite realistic, but 

the best, most mature response is to address the sources of that 

pessimism head-on in a constructive way. Project teams that 

embrace risk mitigation as the response to a realistic assessment of 

the project risk, rather than succumb to pessimism or unrealistic 

optimism, will have more success in their projects. ●

In the fall 2009 issue of ASK, Ed Hoffman wrote that the excessive optimism or pessimism of 

project teams can obscure the realities they need to understand to carry out their projects successfully. 

David T. Hulett, of Hulett & Associates, offers this reflection on Hoffman’s remarks.

We welcome your comments on what you’ve read in this issue of ASK and your suggestions for 

articles you would like to see in future issues. Have a brief comment, a long letter, or your own 

project experience you’d like to share? Send it to us at ASKmagazine@asrcms.com. We look 

forward to hearing from you.

ASK Reader Response

60 | ASK MAGAZINE
ASK Bookshelf

How NASA Builds Teams: Mission Critical Soft 

Skills for Scientists, Engineers, and Project Teams, 

by Charles J. Pellerin (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009)

Since 2003, roughly two thousand NASA personnel and 

contractors have used the NASA Academy for Program/Project 

and Engineering Leadership’s team-building support services. 

In How NASA Builds Teams: Mission Critical Soft Skills for 

Scientists, Engineers, and Project Teams, Charles Pellerin details 

the method he and his colleagues have developed for helping to 

improve the effectiveness of teams at NASA.

The heart of How NASA Builds Teams deals with assessing 

and understanding healthy and unhealthy team contexts. Pellerin 

begins with the story of his tenure as director of astrophysics 

at NASA at the time of the Hubble Space Telescope launch. 

He recounts the pain of discovering shortly after launch that 

the telescope had a spherical aberration, and his astonishment 

at learning that the technical problem had a basis in the 

organizational cultures of NASA and its contractor. “It took me 

several years to realize that I was as culpable as the technician who 

spaced the null corrector incorrectly,” he writes. “I was in charge of 

NASA Astrophysics during the period when P-E [the contractor] 

withheld measurements that suggested we had a mirror problem. 

I was a full party to creating Hubble’s flawed social context.”

This communication breakdown led to what Pellerin calls a 

“red storyline”—the sum of the negative thoughts and expressions 

that team members shared. Healthy, or “green,” storylines are a 

sum of mostly positive shared views. Although storylines seem 

true to the participants, he cautions that they should not be 

mistaken for truths because they are not indisputable.

The key to improving a negative context, he writes, 

is cultivating eight behaviors that healthy teams practice: 

expressing authentic appreciation, addressing shared interests, 

appropriately including others, keeping your agreements, 

expressing reality-based optimism and being 100 percent 

committed, resisting blaming and complaining, and clarifying 

roles and responsibilities. The transformations necessary to 

cultivate these behaviors do not take place overnight, and they 

typically require skilled facilitation through a combination of 

team workshops and individual coaching and mentoring.

This methodology relies on short, individual assessments 

online to determine the extent to which these behaviors are 

present. A picture of the team’s health emerges from the composite 

of individual assessments. After workshops or coaching, followup assessments measure progress on the eight behaviors.

The good news for people who find themselves operating 

on project teams with red storylines is that they can overcome 

negative contexts with effort and commitment. “You have 

several options to change your culture,” Pellerin writes.

Games at Work: How to Recognize and Reduce 

Office Politics, by Mauricio Goldstein and Philip 

Read (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009)

Goldstein and Read analyze the all-too-common games that 

undermine the morale and effectiveness of organizations. 

“Gotcha” (identifying and communicating other people’s 

mistakes), “Marginalize” (exiling people who don’t “fit”), and 

“No Bad News” (suppressing negative information) are among 

the interpersonal games they consider. They also describe 

games played by leaders, including “Kill the Messenger” 

(blaming the person who brings you bad news) and “Token 

Involvement” (pretending to consult with people after you’ve 

made up your mind).

The authors know how hard it is to stop game playing once 

it becomes part of an organizational culture, but they offer solid 

advice on how to try. Recognizing which game is being played is 

key. That makes it possible to short-circuit the game by calling 

attention to it or choosing not to play the expected “role.”

Anyone who has spent time in organizations will be familiar 

with some of these games. Games at Work is a helpful guide to 

countering their destructive power. ●

Here are descriptions of two books that we believe will interest ASK readers.

ASK MAGAZINE | 61
On Not Going It Alone: 

No Organization Is an Island

By Laurence Prusak

The Knowledge Notebook

One of my father’s heroes—and he didn’t have 

many—was Albert Einstein. He often regaled me 

with stories of the great physicist. He especially 

liked to dwell on how Einstein, working in 

solitude in Zurich, wrote five equations that 

revolutionized physics as it was then understood. 

Now, much of what he described is true. One of 

the words he used is less than accurate, though, 

and that word is “solitude.” When I got older, 

I was also intrigued by Einstein and read a few 

biographies written after his death. It turns out 

that he didn’t really work alone. He knew the 

work of most of the leading physicists in Central 

and Western Europe and was in communication 

with many of them. When you think about it, 

this is not the least bit surprising. Einstein was 

both sociable and highly ambitious, and he loved 

talking about the latest theories. And, no matter 

how brilliant and revolutionary he was, his 

ideas were part of an ongoing, shared process of 

wrestling with problems in physics.

What is surprising is the persistence of the 

myth of the solitary genius—the isolated individual 

who, entirely by his own efforts, comes up with 

something new and remarkable that transforms 

the world. It may be an attractive, heroic-sounding 

story, but it generally is not the case in real life. All 

geniuses know what their predecessors have done 

and what their contemporaries are doing; the most 

successful of them are consummate networkers, 

talkers, sharers, and correspondents. No genius 

is an island! Even Isaac Newton, Einstein’s 

predecessor in discovering important truths about 

how the universe works, was connected with the 

ideas and thinkers of his time, though he was far 

less sociable and socially skilled than Einstein.

I have no idea why so many of us still seem to 

believe in the myth of purely individual brilliance 

and accomplishment. It clearly has deep cultural 

roots in western stories of mavericks, pioneers, and 

lonely heroes. The myth has far less potency, for 

example, in Asia. In the West, it seems to defy any 

attempt to eradicate it with facts and historical 

examples. The myth underlies (and is reinforced 

by) the adoration we give to executives of large 

corporations and sports superstars. It makes 

some of us swallow the absurd idea of the “selfmade man,” which suggests that there are people 

whose success owes nothing to parents, teachers, 

colleagues, and the whole social infrastructure of 

health, education, and public safety.

Acceptance of this myth is a danger to 

organizations of all kinds. In our very complex, 

interrelated, and volatile world, any firm, agency, or 

non-governmental organization that consciously or 

unconsciously acts on the belief that an individual 

or organization can “go it alone” is sure to fail. Like 

the geniuses of science, they need to learn from and 

collaborate with the outside world, because no single 

entity can know everything that needs to be known 

to accomplish work or deal with the challenges and 

surprises of the world it operates in.

There is a term in cybernetics known as 

“requisite variety”—the idea that a complex system 

can only sustain itself if its internal variety is equal 

to that of the environment it operates in. What is 

true of cybernetics is also true of organizations. 

Organizations cannot achieve that variety on their 

own. They need to develop processes for working 

with potential allies outside their own systems 

and official channels. Equally important, they 

need to promote the idea that connecting and 

62 | ASK MAGAZINE
collaborating are the way to work—that no one is an island. 

Smart organizations like Procter and Gamble (P&G) are doing 

just that. P&G mandates that half its new products come 

from outside the firm itself. The consulting firm McKinsey, 

the World Bank, and Netflix, to name just a few, have all 

recently begun to organize their work so that they are much 

more open to ideas from outside their own borders. NASA has 

always collaborated with industry and other agencies, and now 

increasingly with governments of other spacefaring nations. 

The trend must continue.

For some, this increasing emphasis on collaboration is not 

a welcome trend. Myths of self-sufficiency die hard. Admitting 

that others have valuable knowledge we do not possess is not 

pleasant, and we have not seen the end of ideas rejected because 

they were “not invented here.” Many of us still have to learn how 

to learn from others. 

Yet there will be little cognitive or material progress without 

increasingly coordinated, interactive learning and collaborative 

work. To understand the rich complexity of today’s knowledge 

environment and act effectively, we must reach out to whoever 

has ideas of value that we can use. We have no alternative but to 

do it—and do it soon. ●

Admitting that others have valuable

knowledge we do not possess is not

pleasant, and we have not seen the

end of ideas rejected because they 

were “not invented here.” Many of

us still have to learn how to learn

from others.

ASK MAGAZINE | 63
ASKinteractive

For More on 

Our Stories

Additional information pertaining 

to articles featured in this issue 

can be found by visiting the 

following Web sites:

• Centennial Challenges: 

www.nasa.gov/offices/ipp/

innovation_incubator/centennial_

challenges/index.html

• NextGen Air Transportation: 

www.aeronautics.nasa.gov/

asp/airspace/index.htm

• CubeSat Initiative: www.

nasa.gov/directorates/somd/

home/CubeSats_initiative.html

feedback

We welcome your comments on what you’ve read in this issue of ASK and your suggestions for articles you 

would like to see in future issues. Share your thoughts with us at askmagazine.nasa.gov/about/write.html.

Learning and Development

The European Space Agency (ESA) is an international organization of eighteen 

member states. By coordinating the financial and intellectual resources of 

its members, it undertakes programs and activities far beyond the scope 

of any single European country. To read about ESA’s missions, view their 

gallery of spectacular space and Earth images, and track their satellites in real 

time, visit www.esa.int. Also check out their YouTube page at www.youtube.

com/esa to watch astronauts answer questions and learn more about ESA’s 

activities in space. 

Web of Knowledge

How often can you say that you’ve seen the components of a space telescope 

being worked on at NASA? Web cameras in Goddard Space Flight Center’s 

largest clean room are now providing daily, live coverage of work on components 

of the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. They provide one image per 

minute so people can see what happens behind the scenes. Of course, the work 

happens during regular working hours, so there may not be action on screen all 

the time. To watch the “Webb cams,” visit www.jwst.nasa.gov/webcam.html.

NASA in the News

New observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory provide evidence for powerful 

“winds” blowing away from the vicinity of a supermassive black hole in a nearby galaxy. 

This discovery indicates that “average” supermassive black holes may play an important 

role in the evolution of the galaxies in which they reside. It has long been suspected that 

material blown away from a black hole—as opposed to the material that falls into it—alters 

the evolution of its host galaxy. The X-ray images and spectra obtained using Chandra’s 

High-Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer showed that material is being driven away from the center of 

galaxy NGC 1068 at about a million miles per hour. Further studies of nearby galaxies will examine the impact of 

other active galactic nuclei winds, leading to improvements in our understanding of the evolution of both galaxies 

and black holes. More information, including images and other multimedia, can be found at chandra.harvard.edu.

64 | ASK MAGAZINE
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