Knowledge Category: Articles & Publications

By John F. Connolly A typical NASA project begins with a set of requirements that describe all the functions and performance a spacecraft must possess.

By Steve Glover NASA’s Space Shuttle is one of the most complex systems ever designed, manufactured, and operated. The shuttle program is organizationally complex, too.

NASA in the News NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, created twin impacts on the moon’s surface in a search for water ice.

By Laurence Prusak If you have traveled in France or Italy recently, you have probably become aware of the “slow food” phenomenon.

By Ed Hoffman The traditional tools of project management do not help leaders with one of their most critical jobs: defining reality.

Don Cohen, Managing Editor “Looking back and looking forward” is one way to sum up the learning strategies considered in this issue of ASK.

By Gerry Daelemans Reorganizations can have unintended and unexpected outcomes. Sometimes they create new problems in the process of solving old ones.

By Mark Saunders and James Ortiz During a 1995 independent review of the development of Mars Pathfinder, Dr. Mike Griffin, a member of the review team, asked the project team how the spacecraft’s radar would determine the distance of the spacecraft from Mars’s surface while swinging back and forth below the parachute.

By Haley Stephenson Three days before the decisive Battle of Gettysburg, General Joseph Hooker, leader of the Union Army, resigned from his post.