ask

By Tom P. Rivellini Here I was: 26 years old, I had never worked on a flight project before, and all eyes were on me.

By Scott Tibbitts This story begins with a bit of serendipity: I was on a trip to see a Shuttle launch and I happened to sit next to a guy who was in charge of batteries for Space Systems/Loral.

By Brian K. Muirhead We came up with two basic concepts for landing Pathfinder on the surface of Mars.

By Jeffrey Bauer Back in 2000, one of the potential Mars projects involved delivering and then flying an observation plane over the planet.

By Dr. Alexander Laufer After I earned my engineering doctorate at the University of Texas, I accepted a teaching position at Texas A&M University. By 1982, I was ready to return to the field and put principles to practice.

By Ed Hoffman Years ago, I interviewed for a job I wasn’t sure I wanted with a man who wasn’t confident he wanted me.

By Todd Post Soon after we started publishing ASK, I heard from some of our NASA readers that we needed to feature more stories about managing research projects.

Dr. Michael Hecht has been a member of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) staff since 1982. He is currently Project Manager and co-investigator for the Mars Environmental Compatibility Assessment (MECA).

By Gerald Murphy The biggest challenge in managing science instrument development or any new technology development for that matter is trying to get the project completed on schedule for the money you have.