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An Introduction to System Safety

By Nancy Leveson System safety uses systems theory and systems engineering approaches to prevent foreseeable accidents and minimize the effects of unforeseen ones. It considers losses in general, not just human death or injury. Such losses may include destruction of property, loss of mission, and environmental harm.

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Interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson

By Don Cohen Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where he also serves as the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium.

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MESSENGER: Big Science in a Small Space

By Kerry Ellis The last time NASA visited Mercury was in the early seventies, when Mariner 10 made history as the first mission to explore two planets and the first spacecraft to use a gravity assist to change its course.

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Learning by Doing: A NASA-Capitol College Partnership

By Ken Dolan Launched in 1996, the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) satellite was expected to map and understand the magnitude of polar ozone depletion for two years.

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Staying Motivated During Tough Times

By Jennifer Cole Our team was working with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on one of those rare projects that is just big enough.

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Featured Invention: NASA Spinoff Technology Helps Detect Cardiovascular Disease

By Daniel Lockney For decades now, NASA has been sending spacecraft throughout the solar system. Once in space, many of these craft use advanced cameras to create images of corners and crevices of our universe never before seen and then transmit these pictures back to laboratories on Earth, where scientists then ask: What exactly are we […]

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Operation Burnt Frost: The Power of Social Networks

By Lucas Steinhauser and Scott Thon On February 20, 2008, a single Standard Missile 3 (SM3), fired from the USS Lake Erie in the Pacific Ocean, shot down a National Reconnaissance Office satellite that was falling out of orbit and potentially posing danger to people around the globe.

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A New Astronaut Seat: Teamwork and Individual Initiative

By Dustin Gohmert As Orion seat subsystem manager, I had been working with contractor Lockheed Martin for approximately a year and a half on the design of an astronaut seat for the new crew exploration vehicle, Orion.

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International Cooperation: When 1 + 1 = 3

By Toshifumi Mukai The hope in international projects is that one plus one will equal three—that the diverse resources, skills, and technologies of the partners will add up to more than the sum of their parts.

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