By Charles Tucker Spinning the upper stage of a rocket in flight is one way to stabilize the vehicle, just as a bullet spins to stay on course. But liquid propellant sloshing around in a spacecraft’s fuel tanks produces a wobble, or nutation, that can cause instability and alter flight trajectory. The rate of wobble […]
By Edgar S. (AB) Davis On March 17, 2002, twin satellites comprising the flight segment of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) were launched by a Russian Rockot launch vehicle from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome into orbit 300 miles above the earth.
By Carol Anne Dunn and Francis J. Merceret Mark Twain once said, “Everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.”
By Rick Grammier Juno was selected in 2005 with an initially scheduled launch in 2009. Almost immediately, though, NASA Headquarters warned us that budgetary issues would delay the launch a year or two and asked the project team to prepare a cost assessment for a 2010 launch.
NASA in the News In April, Professor Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s foremost cosmologists and astrophysicists, spoke about “Why We Should Go Into Space” as part of NASA’s 50th anniversary lecture series.
By Laurence Prusak When I was twelve or so I fell in love with science fiction. It was a short but intense love affair lasting about three years, but its consequences are still very much alive within me. I was brought back to this early passion recently by reading some of the many obituaries for […]
By Ed Hoffman The age of international projects has dawned. Project work is increasingly global. Determining where work happens and how the many, diverse, and widely distributed partners who make up project teams accomplish work together are increasingly part of a project leader’s job.
Don Cohen, Managing Editor At the Academy’s Masters Forum in April, the word “risk” turned up in many presentations and discussions: how to anticipate and mitigate risks; how to learn from risks that turn into real problems; how much risk is acceptable in robotic and human space flight.
By Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman For more and more companies in today’s hypercompetitive business environment, success depends on the ability to innovate and put innovations to productive and profitable use.
