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An Orbital Sciences technician completes final checks of NASA’s NuSTAR inside the Orbital processing facility before the Pegasus payload fairing is secured around it.
Learning from the NuSTAR Launch Delay

By Don Cohen NuSTAR, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, contains the first focusing telescopes designed to look at high-energy X-ray radiation on orbit. It is expected to contribute to a better understanding of collapsing stars and black holes.

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Changing the Project Execution Culture at NASA Dryden
Changing the Project Execution Culture at NASA Dryden

By Thomas J. Horn   A series of audits and workforce surveys at Dryden Flight Research Center in 2009 and early 2010 identified declining on-time performance and workforce morale as major issues at the center.

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Project co-principal investigator Jonathan Glen (lower left) with NASA and Geometrics engineers, troubleshooting SIERRA’s malfunctioned wireless system. With the wireless system down, the payload team developed a workaround that requires the aircraft to be physically tethered to the ground station to download the data after each flight.
Problem Solving on the Fly

By Melissa Pandika   Tucked in the northeastern corner of California, Surprise Valley is set amid a high desert landscape dotted with hot springs and dry lakebeds.

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The International Space Station Payload Operations Center at Marshall Space Flight Center.
Understanding International Project Management

By Angela Marsh At the Marshall Space Flight Center Mission Operations Laboratory, we provide facilities, systems, and ground-systems services to other NASA centers, universities, and research centers and to international space agencies.

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The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite at the Ball Aerospace facility. The Joint Polar Satellite System will be a near clone of NPP.
Project Knowledge in the Moment

By Barbara Fillip NASA’s current Spaceflight Program and Project Management Requirements document, NPR 7120.5E, requires projects to develop lessons-learned plans.

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Liz Rampe, a planetary geologist and postdoctoral researcher, pilots the Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle (MMSEV) down to asteroids spinning at different rates as part of the 2012 Research and Technology Studies (RATS) at Johnson Space Center.
On the Cover Issue 48, Fall 2012

Liz Rampe, a planetary geologist and postdoctoral researcher, pilots the Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle (MMSEV) down to asteroids spinning at different rates as part of the 2012 Research and Technology Studies (RATS) at Johnson Space Center. One of the RATS team’s goals during this testing is to successfully navigate to an asteroid that may be […]

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From the Academy Director: Knowledge and the Practitioner’s Mind-Set

By Ed Hoffman   Who is responsible for the knowledge that NASA creates? Since being named NASA’s Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) at the beginning of 2012, I have given this question a lot of thought.

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