Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) (John Mather)
John Mather will discuss the challenges of organizing and running two teams: the COBE science team and the James Webb Space
Telescope ( JWST) science team. COBE’s three instruments presented unique challenges. Each instrument had its own principal
investigator (PI), so there were different executive styles, which will be compared. Also, the Science Working Group was constituted as
co-investigator on all three instruments, so there were team-level challenges and significant conflicts to be managed, as documented in the book The Very First Light: The True Inside Story of the Scientific Journey Back to the Dawn of the Universe.
To learn more, please visit:
http://appel.nasa.gov/knowledge-sharing/pi-team-masters-forums/
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Shuttle Software AnomalyCase Study–A few minutes after the Shuttle Endeavour reached orbit for STS-126 on Nov. 14, 2008, mission control noticed that the shuttle did not automatically transfer two communications processes from launch to orbit configuration. Primary communications continued to use S-band frequencies after they should have transferred to the more powerful Ku-band. The link between the shuttle and its payload — the Payload Signal Processor (PSP)–remained configured for a radio link rather than switching.
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