National Aeronautics and Space Administration

www.nasa.gov

JPL IT Partners with Missions 

to Get Off the Ground

IT Talk

Jan - Mar 2024 Volume 14 • Issue 1
IT Talk

Jan - Mar 2024 Volume 14 • Issue 1

Office of the CIO

NASA Headquarters

Mary W. Jackson Building

300 E Street SW

Washington, D.C. 20546

Chief Information Officer

Jeff Seaton

Editor & Publication Manager

Eldora Valentine

Graphic & Web Designer

Michael Porterfield

Copy Editor

Meredith Isaacs

Cover Art

Jet Propulsion Laboratory / California 

Institute of Technology

IT Talk is an official publication of the 

Office of the Chief Information Officer 

of the National Aeronautics and 

Space Administration, Headquarters, 

Washington, D.C. It is published 

by the OCIO office for all NASA 

employees and external audiences.

For distribution questions or to 

suggest a story idea, email:

eldora.valentine-1@nasa.gov

To read IT Talk online visit:

www.nasa.gov/it-talk

For more info on the OCIO:

v www.nasa.gov/ocio

v nasa.sharepoint.com/sites/cio/

 (Internal NASA network only)

www.facebook.com/NASAcio

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Message From 

the NASA CIO

JPL IT Partners with 

Missions to Get 

Off the Ground

NaTS Supports NASA 

Missions Enabled by 

Innovative Solutions

ITSM Tool Transition 

Project—Looking 

Forward to Change

Elevating the H4H 

Flight Campaign with 

Dedicated IT Support

In this Issue
Workplace and Collaboration Services (WCS) News and Updates

Check out the latest news from WCS (all links are internal to NASA):

• Migrations to Intune for Mobile Device 

Management Coming in 2024

• Stay up to Date on the Rollout of Follow Me Print

• Wiki Retirement and the Future of Note Taking in Teams

• Completing Your Computer and Mobile Device Refresh

• New Teams Features: Enhancements to Teams 

on Mobile Devices and Apple CarPlay, New 

Channels Experience, Access Stream Videos 

Directly, Using Tags in Teams, and More

• See What's New with ICAM

NASA makes the impossible...possible! And to do that, every day NASA leverages 

technology to keep its missions moving forward. Information technology (IT) and 

the people behind it are an essential part of NASA’s mission success. 

In this issue, we’ll explore how IT is enabling the Psyche and NASA-ISRO SAR 

(NISAR) missions. The Psyche spacecraft is traveling to a unique, metal-rich 

asteroid with the same name, orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. And 

the NISAR mission will measure Earth’s changing ecosystems and bring valuable 

climate data back that can help people worldwide better manage natural resources 

and hazards.

We’ll also look at how the Office of the Chief Information Officer’s NASA Enterprise 

Automation Service team is using new services that enhance and streamline the 

way we work. One of the key offerings is support for Microsoft Power Platform 

(MPP), which includes Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI. Utilizing these 

tools can automate mundane, manual tasks and processes, allowing employees to 

focus on higher-value cognitive tasks.

And a project focusing on a new Information Technology Service Management tool is transforming the way NASA’s IT 

products and services are ordered and managed. This will help us work with our internal customers better. 

The upcoming year is filled with a lot of promise in the world of IT. I look forward to another year of working with all our 

dedicated team members. I wish each of you a happy, healthy, and successful new year.

With gratitude,

Jeff Seaton

NASA Chief Information Officer

NASA OCIO IT Talk Jan - Mar 2024 3

Message from the NASA CIO
ITSM Tool Transition Project—

Looking Forward to Change

By Bonnie May, Jacke James, John Sprague, and Penny Hubbard, OCIO Service Management Office

Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) is all about ensuring 

that NASA’s Office of the CIO (OCIO) 

provides high-quality, secure, and 

timely IT services to meet the expectations of the agency’s missions and 

support workforces. ITSM is managed 

by IT service providers in agency level 

offices (ALOs), service lines (SLs), and 

center CIO offices, through an appropriate mix of people, processes, and 

technologies. 

It is built on the premise that IT must 

act as a service-delivery organization, 

but it cannot optimize what it does 

not manage. The ITSM Tool Transition 

project will provide accountability for 

end-to-end coordination and visibility 

across the delivery of IT services and 

will be measured to track improvements in quality of service, efficiency, 

and risk reduction. The ITSM Tool 

Transition also standardizes the processes used to provide IT services, 

thus improving the relationship with 

NASA end-users and their IT.

The ITSM Tool Transition project also 

directly addresses the maturation of IT 

processes, including NASA’s IT Strategic Plan Objective 2.3: Increase the 

reliability, effectiveness, and efficiency 

of NASA’s IT operations, while ensuring that NASA’s OCIO Transformation

[links internal to NASA] continues to 

move forward with new approaches to 

improving customer experiences.

The OCIO Service Management Office 

(SMO) is working with other OCIO 

organizations, including the Enterprise 

Project Management Office (EPMO) 

and the Applications and Platform 

Services (APS) Service Line, developing initial stages of the future ITSM 

tool to transform the way NASA’s IT 

products and services are ordered 

and managed. To achieve this transformation, SMO is focused on several 

core processes, including IT Incident 

Management, IT Service Catalog Management, IT Change Management, 

and IT Service Request Management. 

These processes are being optimized 

to provide desired business outcomes 

that include the following:

• Improved operational efficiency 

and responsiveness

• Enhanced customer experience

• Improved enablement 

of the mission

• Increased service delivery 

consistency and quality

• Reduced risk

• Reduced sustainability costs

The SMO Strategy and Roadmap, 

approved in July 2023, is the blueprint 

for efficient IT Operations moving the 

agency forward on this multi-year effort. We look forward to providing the 

agency’s missions and support workforces high-quality, secure, and timely 

IT services via the ITSM Tool Transition 

project.

Visit the Service Management Office 

(SMO) website for more details about 

SMO and how we support the NASA 

and OCIO missions.

4 www.nasa.gov
ITSM Tool Transition Project—

By the Numbers

Lydia M. Ferguson, ITSM Tool Transition Project Manager and Rachel Campbell, Cross-cutting Business Solutions (CBS) 

Portfolio Communications Lead, OCIO Enterprise Program/Project Management Office, NASA Headquarters

The Information Technology Service 

Management (ITSM) Tool Transition project is being managed by the 

Cross-cutting Business Solutions 

Portfolio, out of NASA’s Office of 

the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) 

Enterprise Program/Project Management Office. The ITSM Tool Transition 

project is funded by the IT Modernization Working Capital Fund, with an 

expected duration of up to 7 years. To 

provide processes and a tool to enable 

and support the delivery of IT services 

across the agency, it is critical that the 

ITSM Tool Transition project leverage 

representation from across the agency. 

The project’s Core and Extended 

teams are composed of approximately 

90 members, including IT service 

providers from across the agency 

serving in a part-time capacity, providing representation from all six services 

lines and eight agency level offices. 

All center CIO offices are providing 

requirements except the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s. Additionally, five 

enterprise contracts are contributing 

to the project. The continuous participation and collaboration of these team 

members will be key to the success 

of the ITSM Tool Transition project.

ServiceNow’s Information Technology 

Service Management Product

By Kimberlee Daugherty, Enterprise ServiceNow Product Manager, and Dom Gattuso, Enterprise ServiceNow Systems 

Architect, OCIO Application and Platform Services

Establishing standardized processes, 

entrenched in Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best 

practices, stands as an imperative 

for maintaining service continuity, 

boosting operational efficiencies, and 

ensuring consistent reporting. By 

harnessing technological elements, we 

inject automation, transparency, and 

an enriched customer experience into 

the services we provide. Introducing 

ServiceNow’s ITSM Product, a ninetime consecutive leader in Information Technology Service Management 

(ITSM) tools within the industry, which 

empowers NASA to automate these 

processes with a best-in-class solution. Rendering automated processes 

within Employee Center, a multidepartmental service portal, provides 

self-service capabilities within a 

modern, sleek interface. It marks a 

historic milestone for NASA, centralizing our services, harnessing automation, and expediting issue resolution.

Here are a just a few of the processes the ServiceNow’s ITSM 

modules will automate:

• IT Incident Management: Automation helps the quick identification, categorization, and 

resolution of incidents, leading 

to faster response times and 

improved service quality.

• IT Change Management:

The system documents modifications within an environment, leveraging built-in approvals to reduce 

errors and increase visibility.

• IT Service Request Management: Automating request fulfillment streamlines service delivery, 

ensuring that tickets are processed 

and fulfilled in a timely manner.

NASA’s strategic investment in ServiceNow’s ITSM Product will yield 

significant benefits down the line as 

we begin to reap the advantages of 

automating standard processes!

Image Credit: ServiceNow

NASA OCIO IT Talk Jan - Mar 2024 5
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) IT 

provides significant, measurable, 

value-added contributions to mission success through its ability to 

deliver customized technologies and 

cost-competitive service alternatives. 

JPL IT works to partner throughout 

the entire project life cycle to plan for 

future needs, offer timely responses, 

identify potential cost savings and risk 

reductions, and share successful IT 

implementations with other mission 

teams. For Mars 2020, the mission 

launched and deployed the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter 

during the pandemic. Because the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) team 

were unable to fully assemble in the 

Mission Control room, JPL IT utilized 

cameras to enable team members to 

view, monitor, and communicate critical information during EDL safely from 

multiple locations, a first for JPL. 

Two new missions, Psyche and the 

NASA–Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Synthetic Aperture 

Radar (NISAR), have provided new opportunities for JPL IT to innovate while 

supporting the mission community. For 

Psyche, launched in October 2023 to 

explore a unique metal-rich asteroid, 

JPL IT has been a support and close 

collaborator since its early mission 

development stage in 2019. In addition 

to delivering all essential day-to-day 

information technology, JPL IT

• provided hardware for compute 

and network connectivity 

from the mission’s test bed 

to both their compute site 

and a key contractor site;

• offered dedicated Assembly Test 

Launch Operations (ATLO) support 

at JPL and Kennedy Space 

Center, with setup for the latter 

requiring personnel to travel during 

the pandemic; ATLO infrastructure 

support remained through 

early cruise operations; and

• created a dedicated cyber 

overview and threat analysis 

dashboards for Psyche; the 

JPL IT team also partnered 

with the mission through the 

Assessment & Authorization/

Authorization to Operate 

process, a dedicated service 

to verify all JPL IT deliverables 

completed for the mission. 

During the buildup to launch through 

early cruise operations, the IT-mission 

partnership continued via regular 

biweekly tag-ups and other meetings. 

JPL IT conducted a prelaunch Operational Readiness Review (ORR) following a format familiar to flight projects, 

and the Psyche IT ORR results were 

reported at the Psyche Project ORR/

Mission Readiness Review.

At launch, JPL IT was on hand for 

dedicated and after-hours support for 

networks, compute, cybersecurity, 

identity, and conference room audiovisual functions during the critical 

events for the Psyche Launch. Shifts 

were established to cover 24 hours for 

the days up to five days prior to the 

event and for up to two days after post 

the event. This was critical to providing 

cover for unforeseen issues.

JPL IT Partners with Missions 

to Get Off the Ground

By Whitney Haggins, IT Communication Strategist, and 

Emily Tjaden, Communication Specialist, Jet Propulsion 

Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

6 www.nasa.gov
JPL IT’s ongoing support of NISAR—

the joint Earth-observing mission 

between NASA and ISRO—has helped 

facilitate the unique partnership and 

collaboration between mission teams 

on opposite sides of the world. 

Essential infrastructure services are 

provided by JPL IT to all of NISAR’s 

mission ground systems, which 

include areas in Identity, Credentials 

and Access Management (ICAM); 

network, hardware, and software; and 

cybersecurity. Part of ICAM’s role is to 

help ensure that if a connection fails 

or is temporarily offline, the mission’s 

ground data systems will remain secure, with local authentication services. The Network team ensures that 

all the systems are properly connected 

in each location. This requires moving 

equipment, installing network cable, 

and deploying an additional firewall to 

secure the NISAR environment.

Much of the support these teams 

provide to NISAR is not unique—missions across JPL need the assistance 

of ICAM, Network, and other services—however, planning for key network 

and access connections that must 

remain uninterrupted to India requires 

special levels of project engagement. 

The 12.5-hour time difference between 

JPL and India means that meetings 

were often held in the wee hours of 

the morning or late at night. Numerous 

members of JPL IT have even traveled 

across the globe to provide in-person 

coordination and support to ISRO.

Different JPL IT system administration teams added to the well-rounded 

support by setting up the IT infrastructure (i.e., compute and storage) 

that handles the authorization and 

authentication, and name service 

resolution for the System Integration Testbed (SIT). Typically, all of 

the SIT process is held in the United 

States, but there needed to be special 

setups for ISRO-specific considerations and resource constraints. 

With an early 2024 launch date, JPL IT 

is working closely with ISRO to identify 

the extent of support provided by JPL 

as the entire launch operations will be 

handled by the team in India. A few 

areas of focus include the move of the 

spacecraft and its instruments from 

the test facility to the launch site, possibly transporting JPL IT personnel to 

India for launch, and also JPL IT’s support during the 90-day commissioning 

phase, when instruments are coming 

online postlaunch. 

“Generally speaking, there’s a lot of 

hard work that’s being done in IT,” 

said Mark Nastri, System Architect for 

ICAM, “and understanding the vital 

role we play here at JPL, and for our 

mission partners specifically, really 

connects everybody across the organization with the primary goal of the 

Laboratory—exploring space on behalf 

of humanity.”

Enabling Missions with Cloud Technical 

Environments at Johnson Space Center

By Claire Little, CCS Service Management SME, Cloud and Computing Services, NASA Headquarters

OCIO Cloud and Computing Services 

(CCS) cloud infrastructure is doing exciting, critical work supporting mission 

goals and success across the agency. 

The CCS presence at Johnson Space 

Center (JSC) in particular has made 

considerable use of NASA Cloud Technical Environments (CTEs), built within 

commercial cloud services platforms, 

for hosting, storage, and other functions, both for developing new tools/

processes and for migrating existing 

infrastructure from on-premises to 

cloud solutions.

The JSC Image Science and Analysis 

Group’s Orion Imagery Information 

Management System (OIIMS) tool, 

hosted within a CTE, allows easy 

dissemination of imagery and other 

observational data on Orion vehicle 

performance to engineering and flight 

operations stakeholders, helping to 

ensure Artemis mission safety and success. Hosting OIIMS within the cloud 

frees up storage, computing cycles, 

and maintenance on local servers and 

allows smooth integration with MSFC’s 

Imagery Reporting Database for incorporation into cross-program reporting.

Business and Information Systems 

Services within the Human Health and 

Performance Directorate (HH&P) completed a migration of approximately 

100 legacy machines from an on-prem 

data center to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) commercial Infrastructureas-a-Service cloud platform. Shifting 

from on-prem hosting to the cloud 

reduces the amount of power load on 

aging data center infrastructure, as 

well as the cost of managing hardware 

obsolescence. Lessons learned from 

this migration will positively impact 

future migrations, improving understanding and assessment of which 

workloads can be virtualized, consolidated, or collapsed and which should 

remain on-premises.

HH&P is also working a proof-ofconcept Very Large Data Transfer 

capability to support the movement 

of terabyte-size Omics data files for 

Life Sciences. CCS worked with JSC 

to develop a low-cost process that is 

able to ingest data, perform checks, 

and archive those data in the NASA 

Life Sciences Portal or transfer them to 

other environments, such as the NASA 

Space Radiation Group’s own cloud 

platform. Creating something custom 

to NASA’s needs that utilizes AWS 

but can integrate with other providers, 

such as Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure, provides a higher-speed, 

less cumbersome data transfer experience than AWS’s off-the-shelf service.

Want to find out more about CCS’s 

cloud services and what they can do 

for you? Visit our About Us page [link 

internal to NASA] for a list of available 

services and ways to contact us.

NASA OCIO IT Talk Jan - Mar 2024 7
NaTS Supports NASA Missions Enabled by 

Innovative Solutions

By Sylvester Placid, AEGIS Communications Team Lead, Marshall Space Flight Center

From the agency’s new streaming 

service to a historic asteroid sample 

return, Network and Telecommunications Services (NaTS) is supporting 

NASA missions enabled by the following innovations from Advanced Enterprise Global IT Solutions (AEGIS).

Eight New IVoDS for Lunar 

Utilization Control Area

The Internet Voice Distribution System (IVoDS) enables closed mission 

support “loops” for voice conferencing among crew, operations 

personnel, and researchers. At the 

Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) at Marshall Space Flight 

Center (MSFC), our team operates 

IVoDS for voice communication with 

the International Space Station and 

supported 327 concurrent IVoDS 

users for the Artemis I mission.

The team installed IVoDS for eight 

flight controller consoles in the Lunar Utilization Control Area (LUCA), 

a state-of-the-art, configurable control room designed to support future 

lunar utilization operations, deep 

space exploration missions, and small 

satellite missions. LUCA, along with 

other HOSC capabilities, will leverage IVoDS to help flight controllers 

develop the blueprint and concept 

of operations for future lunar science 

operations and missions, including Gateway and Lunar Lander.

Enterprise Video Content Delivery 

Network Plays Pivotal Role in 

Historic OSIRIS-REx Mission

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, 

Resource Identification, Security, 

Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft launched in September 2016 to 

collect samples from the asteroid Bennu. A capsule containing the samples 

returned successfully in September 

2023, completing the first U.S. mission 

to return samples from an asteroid to 

Earth. The Enterprise Video Content 

Delivery Network (EVCDN) played a 

pivotal role in supporting the OSIRISREx mission, providing critical video 

services that were not possible during 

previous high-visibility missions.

The team provided eight remote video 

connections enabling NASA to broadcast real-time mission events from the 

spacecraft’s arrival at Bennu, the descent to collect a sample, and sample 

capsule’s return to Earth. The team 

helped place video encoders in mobile 

backpacks connected to helicopters, 

drones, and the NASA WB-57 aircraft 

to broadcast stunning live coverage of 

sample capsule recovery efforts in the 

Utah desert. The EVCDN team enabled new live video feeds for the mission at Johnson Space Center mission 

control and support rooms that could 

not receive them before, and powered 

field voice support circuits that connected remote OSIRIS-REx mission 

teams during the mission.

Coverage of the mission to NASA internal and external audiences, carried 

completely over Internet Protocol (IP) 

infrastructure, saved the agency from 

deploying costly, traditional satellite 

uplinks for video distribution. Mission 

coverage was broadcast in 4K Ultra 

High Definition for NASA TV and NASA 

social media sites – the video of the 

sample capsule return on the NASA 

YouTube channel has been viewed 

more than three million times.

Experts Supporting Handheld 

Universal Lunar Camera Imagery 

Initiative for Artemis Missions

The Handheld Universal Lunar Camera 

(HULC) initiative aims to provide stunning imagery broadcast to Earth from 

the Moon during upcoming Artemis 

missions. The project has representation from every program within Artemis 

– Gateway, Human Lander System, 

Orion, Pressurized Rover, Extravehicular Activity, and Human Surface Mobility Program – to ensure full integration 

of HULC.

Imagery and video experts from 

NaTS and AEGIS represent HULC at 

Gateway Imagery planning meetings, 

providing the concept of operations 

for the camera and recommendations 

based on our combined expertise. 

The team, working closely with HULC, 

were able to identify specific integrations for power connections and 

adapters for the camera with each 

vehicle supporting Artemis missions.

Huntsville Operations Support 

Center Team Configure Amazon 

Echo for Axiom-3 Mission to ISS

Firewall engineers at the HOSC at 

MSFC enable access to customer 

8 www.nasa.gov
payloads to the International Space 

Station (ISS), utilizing HOSC Trek 

custom software and resources. To 

support a requirement to fly an Amazon Echo device onboard an upcoming Axiom Space mission to the 

ISS in January 2024, the engineers 

designed and implemented a VPNto-VPN gateway between the HOSC 

and a NASA cloud instance hosted 

by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The Axiom team established an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) client 

in the NASA AWS environment that 

houses HOSC Trek software that communicates with the Amazon Echo to 

be flown onboard the Axiom-3 mission, which will enable Amazon Alexa 

voice services for mission operations. 

The team supported several tests 

with Amazon, Axiom, and the Joint 

Station Local Area Network (JSL), 

which replicates ISS on-board connectivity, with the engineers simulating the delays in connectivity expected in real-time operations.

NASA+ On-Demand Streaming 

Service Now Available

In November 2023, NASA released 

an all-new on-demand streaming 

platform, NASA+. The new service is 

ad-free, no cost, family-friendly, and 

grants viewers access to the agency’s 

Emmy Award-winning live coverage 

and views into NASA missions through 

collections of original video series, 

and a few new series launching with 

the service. The team collaborated 

with the NASA Web Services Office 

(WSO) to create the NASA+ app. 

Utilizing our Media Asset Management 

system (MAMs) to send video files to 

WSO, the team is enabling organization of NASA video assets as well as 

upload, record, edit, manage, metadata, and publishing capabilities for 

NASA media. MAMs is the backbone 

for video within NASA+, creating a 

seamless solution for the NASA Office 

of Communications to manage NASA+ 

content. NASA+ is now available via 

the NASA app on iOS and Android 

mobile and tablet devices; streaming media players such as, Roku, 

Apple TV, and Fire TV; and on the web 

across desktop and mobile devices.

Network Services Support NASA 

Partners and Robotic Dog at GRC

The team implemented network and 

Wireless Access Point (WAP) enhancements across Glenn Research Center 

(GRC), including support for a robotic 

dog named Astro at the GRC Central 

Air Facility. Astro relies on wireless 

coverage to autonomously inspect air 

handlers in the Central Air Facility that 

generate noise harmful to human ears.

Our team at GRC completed the 

wireless deployment within the Test 

Services Building and supported 

multiple wireless deployments within 

seven buildings across GRC and the 

GRC Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility (GRC-ATF), including cable plant 

and WAP planning and deployment 

in the Shop Building, the Small-Scale 

Multi-Purpose Research Facility, the 

Instrument Research Laboratory, 

the Research Analysis Center, the 

10x10 Supersonic Wind Tunnel Office 

and Control Building, the GRC-ATF 

Space Environments Complex, and 

the Central Air Equipment Building.

The team also supported construction of the deployment of an additional data circuit between GRC 

Lewis Field and the GRC GRC-ATF, 

plus a Point of Presence (POP) at 

both locations. Construction support included completion of cable 

plant on Lewis Field for a new link to 

add further redundancy to support 

testing at GRC-ATF for NASA industry partners Blue Origin, Lockheed 

Martin, Sierra Space, and SpaceX.

HOSC Team Enables Robotic 

Surgery Experiment on 

International Space Station

Our network engineering team built a 

HOSC Remote Applications Payload 

Test Router Gateway for an ISS payload supporting a robotic surgery experiment scheduled for later this year.

The payload utilizes a new miniature 

surgical robot to complete simulated 

surgical tasks on orbit, both autonomously and while remotely controlled 

by an Earth-based user. The experiment investigates the effects of microgravity and latency on robotic surgery. 

The surgical tasks are first performed 

on Earth under normal gravity and 

eventually on the ISS in microgravity. Robot precision and dexterity 

in both environments can then be 

compared. These capabilities contribute to successful robotic surgeries on 

Earth and will be essential in space. 

The router gateway created by 

the team was shipped to the customer at the University of Nebraska for testing before being 

included in the ISS Express Rack 

Locker for its 2024 expedition.

NASA OCIO IT Talk Jan - Mar 2024 9
Elevating the H4H Flight Campaign with 

Dedicated IT Support

By Robert Baysinger, COMSEC/IT Security Lead, Wallops Flight Facility

As part of the Navy Strategic Systems 

Programs and the Army Hypersonic 

Project Office High Operational Tempo 

for Hypersonics (H4H) flight campaign, 

Wallops Flight Facility successfully 

launched two sounding rocket experiments this past November. This flight 

campaign supports research for the 

Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike 

and the Army’s Long Range Hypersonic Weapon offensive programs.

From the perspective of the Headquarters/Goddard Space Flight Center 

Office of Chief Information Officer’s 

Regional IT Services and Solutions Division at Wallops, supporting the H4H 

flight campaign demanded extensive 

planning, preparation, and implementation efforts, totaling several hundred 

work hours. Successful execution 

of this mission required contributions from multiple service areas and 

teams, including network, cable plant, 

voice, and Facility Unique Specialized 

Engineers, as well as communications security (COMSEC) personnel 

and IT Mission Services Managers. 

The groundwork began months in 

advance, involving the collection of 

detailed customer requirements and a 

comprehensive understanding of the 

mission’s technical environment. This 

process included numerous meetings 

and discussions to translate a broad 

list of general statements and “nice to 

haves” into specific needs. 

From there, the team initiated the creation of tailored solutions to address 

the comprehensive data and voice 

communication requirements of the 

entire mission. This involved provisioning network connections to ensure 

seamless access to the customer's 

corporate networks. The task extended to linking the Operations Control 

Center to the launch pad across an 

8-mile separation, necessitating the 

allocation, installation, and patching of extensive lengths of fiber-optic 

and copper cables. This meticulous 

process established a robust network 

infrastructure capable of efficiently 

managing the substantial volume of 

data generated throughout the mission. Using approved encrypted devices over this infrastructure, the team 

facilitated the routing of classified data 

for launch support, data acquisition, 

and decision-making processes.

For this mission, a classified video 

teleconference capability and access 

to classified networks were provided 

to ensure secure encrypted communications. In addition, support of our 

Mission Operational Voice Enhancement system was provided to ensure 

smooth, uninterrupted communication 

between the various mission critical 

operational departments spread between the mainland, island, and main 

base at Wallops. 

As the launch window approached, 

the mission tempo increased, requiring 

additional support to manage issues 

that arose, address failures, and fulfill 

new requirements from the customer. 

The culmination of months of hard 

work and dedication came to a successful conclusion on the 1-day event, 

with less than 30 minutes of actual 

flight time. 

Following the mission's conclusion, the 

test team diligently undertook the task 

of packing up and securely transporting every piece of equipment and classified material. As the mission wrapped 

up, the team compiled a comprehensive list of lessons learned, highlighting 

successes and areas ripe for improvement. This commitment to continuous process review and meticulous 

documentation propels an unwavering 

pursuit of excellence in all forthcoming missions. What’s up next? Time to 

start preparing for the next mission.

10 www.nasa.gov
Empowering NASA’s Digital Transformation 

with Microsoft Power Platform

By Lilyan Parker, Intelligent Automation Program Manager, Application and Platform Services, NASA Headquarters and 

DeAsha Campbell, Program Analyst, Application and Platform Services, Marshall Space Flight Center

The OCIO's Application & Platform 

Services’ NASA Enterprise Automation Service (NEAS) team is excited 

to announce a range of new services 

and activities aimed at enhancing 

and streamlining the way we work. 

One of the key offerings is support 

for Microsoft Power Platform (MPP), 

which includes Power Apps, Power 

Automate, and Power BI. Utilizing 

these tools can automate mundane, 

manual tasks and processes, allowing 

employees to focus on higher-value, 

cognitive tasks. In addition to MPP 

support, NEAS also offers a Community of Practice (CoP) and a friendly 

competition known as the Microsoft 

Power Platform Palooza, providing 

learning opportunities, collaboration, 

and innovation.

1. Microsoft Power Platform (MPP) 

support. You’re overly familiar 

with Microsoft Office—Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. But have you 

tried your hand yet at Microsoft’s 

Power Apps, Power Automate, or 

Power BI?

To help you get started with MPP, 

NEAS offers MPP support services such as software training 

and automation development to 

help NASA personnel leverage the 

capabilities of Power Apps, Power 

Automate, and Power BI. Can you 

think of some tasks that your team 

currently performs that are timeconsuming and repetitive? Let 

NEAS assist you [links internal to 

NASA] by delivering quick solutions and low-cost automations. 

Your team will thank you!

2. NEAS Community of Practice 

(CoP). If you’re someone who 

enjoys learning new things and 

problem-solving with fellow smarties, then this collaborative CoP 

is for you! The NEAS facilitates a 

monthly CoP, providing a collaborative platform for NASA personnel to learn, problem-solve, and 

share knowledge. The CoP covers 

a wide range of topics, including 

training sessions, success stories, 

lessons learned, issue troubleshooting, and vendor demos. By 

participating, employees can stay 

up to date with the latest developments and engage with like-minded individuals who are passionate 

about automation. Check out the 

CoP for more information.

3. Microsoft Power Platform 

Palooza. This competition is open 

to all NASA personnel regardless 

of technical background. The goal 

of the competition is to learn and 

utilize one of the MPP applications 

to create an innovative low-code/

no-code solution. Participants 

can work individually or as a small 

team to develop their solutions. 

The competition runs until midJanuary, providing ample time 

for interested individuals to join 

or showcase their creativity and 

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NASA OCIO IT Talk Jan - Mar 2024 11
National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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NASA OCIO Holiday Party at Headquarters on November 29, 2023.

IT Talk