NASA Employees Research Articles

An Operational Assessment of Team Cognition for Long-Distance Space Missions

Long-duration and long-distance space missions create a complicated context for collaboration. The combination of environmental and psychosocial factors will negatively impact individual and team cognition, potentially jeopardizing mission success. To provide a richer understanding of the issues surrounding team cognition for future space exploration missions, this paper describes an operational assessment to identify the key team cognition factors most likely to affect problem solving. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to elicit team cognitive and associated factors relevant to long-duration spaceflight missions. Ten NASA employees (e.g., astronauts, mission controllers) were interviewed to provide a more complete and accurate representation of individual and team cognitive demands. Our goal was to explicate critical cognitive processes associated with team effectiveness in space missions and provide guidance on technology and training collaborative problem solving for space missions.

Making Sense of Catastrophic Accidents: A Theodicy-Based Framework

Catastrophic accidents can considerably threaten organizational members’ identification with their organization, and consequently cause their psychological distress. However, no studies have examined the strategies that organizational members use to make sense of such accidents and restore their psychological wellbeing. This paper draws on Weber’s theodicy concept, which reconciles the conflict between sacred and profane, to examine how organizational members sensemaking strategies. We combine an interpretive analysis of accounts by NASA employees following three fatal organizational accidents with a goal of creating a generalizable sensemaking framework, illustrating the utility of Weber’s theodicy concept to our understanding of how organizational members make sense of accidents. Our analysis reveals extensive use of theodicy logics to explain these accidents.

Does gist drive NASA experts’ design decisions?

AbstractAs engineers retire from practice, they must transfer their expertise to new recruits. Typically, this is accomplished using decision‐support systems that communicate precise probabilities. However, Fuzzy‐Trace Theory (FTT) predicts that the most experts prefer to rely on “gist” representations of risk over “verbatim” representations. We conducted a survey of 41 NASA employees (whose mathematical abilities are a prerequisite for their jobs) and 233 nonexperts. We tested whether experts designing space missions under the micrometeoroid and orbital debris (MMOD) impact – rely more on qualitative or quantitative risk representations. We tested three hypotheses: gist and verbatim representations of MMOD risk are distinct for both experts and nonexperts; gist representations are more predictive of decisions than are verbatim representations; and providing nonexperts with a bottom‐line meaning change their gists more than verbatim information does. Results support FTT's predictions: gist and verbatim representations were distinct, and gist representations were associated with decisions for both experts and nonexperts. We did not observe an association between quantitative risk estimates and decisions for either experts or nonexperts. We observed that exposing a nonexpert to an expert's gist modified that nonexpert's gist yet exposing quantitative risk information did not. Implications for expertise transfer are discussed.

Hubble telescope camera is broken — and US government shutdown could delay repairs

Ageing telescope’s wide-field camera fails while key NASA employees are on involuntary, indefinite leave due to political impasse. Ageing telescope’s wide-field camera fails while key NASA employees are on involuntary, indefinite leave due to political impasse.

Informing the Development of a Safety and Performance Metric Selection Toolkit

Ensuring safety and optimal performance in Long Distance and Duration Exploration Missions (LDDEM) is critical to enabling success in future missions. However, selecting appropriate metrics for assessing safety and performance remains a challenge. The current research endeavor aims to address this challenge through the development of a metric selection tool architecture. Prior to the current facet of metric toolkit development, a systematic review of NASA documents and literature aided in identifying overarching themes for measuring human-automation interaction. However, many of the studies found in this literature review, were not specific to the spaceflight domain. Since this toolkit is being constructed to serve a specific audience – NASA designers and engineers – it is critical that the toolkit be designed based on their unique needs and preferences. Therefore, so as to inform toolkit design and development for the spaceflight domain, structured interviews were conducted with NASA employees to enhance effectiveness of the measurement selection apparatus. Interviews were coded to detect trends in responses and incorporate feedback into the next prototype design stage. Results provided insight into design features, measurement challenges, current procedures, and work environmental factors that will be integrated into the current toolkit. Respondent feedback implications and future directions for toolkit improvement are discussed.

A brief analysis of US space employment

Space policy is an area of industrial economic policy. The space economy would vanish without the active role of the state. Although space may appear exotic to economist, it is not impossible to provide a quick economic insight into one of the most important aspects of all economic activities - the people employed. The space industry can attract employees from other industries in two ways. First, according to individual preferences and motivations. Second, on the basis of higher wages. Statistical evidence suggests the latter is more common. Moreover wages do not reflect productivity. NASA employees earn much more than employees in law or medicine. This does not match the social importance of these activities. Space employs many more people that stated by the OECD. Taking all activities together space employs almost half a million people in the USA. $1 billion given to NASA creates up to 24 000 vacancies in the space industry and also provides room for another 40 000 in the space economy in the long run. Current changes to the US national space programme suggest a decrease of $1.6 billion per year, implying a loss of up to 39 000 jobs.

Development of Occupational Health at NASA

As NASA celebrates the 50th anniversary of human spaceflight, we reflect back on the individuals who forged a new way in the frontier of space. While much has been written about the astronauts and the systems that got them into space and safely home; less attention has been given to NASA employees and its contractors. NASA has always been conscious of the unique nature of its workforce and its importance to the space program. NASA established a comprehensive occupational health program, which began as part of the Agency's Space Medicine function in the early 1960s. Over the years, this program grew in stature and capability. This paper traces the history and development of NASA's Occupational Health, highlighting the programs and people who focused their energies on ensuring the health and safety of its workforce.

How Near-Misses Influence Decision Making Under Risk: A Missed Opportunity for Learning

Although organizations appear to learn from obvious failures, we argue that it is harder for them to learn from “near-misses”—events in which chance played a role in averting failure. In this paper, we formalize the concept of near-misses and hypothesize that organizations and managers fail to learn from near-misses because they evaluate such events as successes and thus feel safer about the situation. We distinguish perceived (“felt”) risk from calculated statistical risk and propose that lower levels of perceived risk encourage people with near-miss information to make riskier subsequent decisions compared to people without near-miss information. In our first study, we confirm the tendency to evaluate near-misses as successes by having participants rate a project manager whose decisions result in either (a) mission success, (b) near-miss, or (c) failure. Participants (both students and NASA employees and contractors) give similar ratings to managers whose decisions produced near-misses and to managers whose decisions resulted in successes, and both ratings are significantly different from ratings of managers who experienced failures. We suggest that the failure to hold managers accountable for near-misses is a foregone learning opportunity for both the manager and the organization. In our second set of studies, we confirm that near-miss information leads people to choose a riskier alternative because of a lower perceived risk following near-miss events. We explore several alternative explanations for these findings, including the role of Bayesian updating in processing near-miss data. Ultimately, the analysis suggests that managers and organizations are reducing their perception of the risk, although not necessarily updating (lowering) the statistical probability of the failure event. We speculate that this divergence arises because perceived risk is the product of associative processing, whereas statistical risk arises from rule-based processing.

Court battle over badge rules at Jet Propulsion Lab

A group of 28 scientists, engineers, and administrative support staff, who are contract workers associated with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., has mounted a court battle over a requirement that all NASA employees and contractors must complete a questionnaire with a waiver authorizing NASA to conduct broad background investigations into professional and personal areas of their lives. Workers need to complete this document (Standard Form 85 for low‐risk positions) in order to receive new identification badges that provide access to JPL.This requirement to complete the document applies to the JPL workforce of 5000, most of whom are contract workers whose positions NASA has designated as nonsensitive or low risk. The plaintiffs (also referred to as appellants), who are employees of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) working at JPL on NASA projects, consider the waiver in particular as allowing an invasion of privacy that also could adversely affect the retention and hiring of contractors and an open scientific environment.

An introduction to the NASA Shuttle ground operations simulator (SGOS)

AbstractThe Shuttle ground operations simulator (SGOS) simulation software introduced in this paper is used to train NASA ground controllers and to certify launch countdown readiness. The SGOS executive and its subsystems have been an integral component of the Shuttle Launch Safety Program for almost 30 years. It is usable (via a LAN) by over 2000 NASA employees at the Kennedy Space Center and 11 000 contractors. SGOS supports over 800 models comprised of several hundred thousand lines of code and over 1000 Model Control Procedures. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

It's Not What You Know: A Transactive Memory Analysis of Knowledge Networks at NASA

Much of America was stunned into mourning on February 1, 2003 as the space shuttle Columbia was reported to have broken up over Texas. The ensuing investigation revealed that debris at liftoff was the cause of the crash, but the official report suggested that NASA's organizational communication was just as much to blame. This article uses transactive memory theory to argue that there were significant gaps in the knowledge network of NASA organizational members, and those gaps impeded information flow regarding potential disaster. E-mails to and from NASA employees were examined (the “To” and “From” fields) to map a network of communication related to Columbia's damage and risk. Although NASA personnel were connected with each other in this incident-based network, the right information did not get to the people who needed it. The article concludes with extensions of theory and practical implications for organizations, including NASA.

BUSH CALLS FOR RETURN TO MOON

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH unveiled his vision for the future of human space travel at NASA headquarters on Jan. 14. The plan, A Renewed Spirit of Discovery, provides the agency with a new focus and goals. Inspired by all that has come before, and guided by clear objectives, today we set a new course for America's space program, Bush told NASA employees. In his plan, Bush calls for NASA to return the shuttle to flight so that the International Space Station (ISS) can be completed by 2010, at which time the shuttle will be retired. NASA will also refocus the ISS research with the primary almost singular emphasis on the study of the effects of space travel on human biology, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said. Physical and chemical research that was planned for the space station will clearly take second priority to life sciences, says John M. Logsdon, director of the ...

Florida's space coast: the impact of NASA on the Sunshine State

The story of America's half century in space exploration, from the successful launch of the first two-stage rocket in 1950 to the space shuttle missions of 2000. It shows how the space programme transformed the east central Florida coast from a traditional citrus production and tourist area into one of the most influential high-tech centres of the nation. Cape Canaveral was chosen as a missile launch site because of its many geographical advantages. However, in the early years of the space programme, the area was far from an ideal place for NASA employees to raise their families. NASA brought in thousands of space-related workers who, besides sending machines and men into space, had to meet the challenge of moving their families from urban environms to a rural southern county. This book recounts the parallel stories of the establishment of America's space programme and its impact on the development of Brevard County.

As launch to Saturn nears, plutonium controversy increases

After years of rigorous planning and testing, NASA scientists say they are convinced that the mid‐October launch of the $3.4 billion, plutonium‐powered Cassini mission to Saturn poses nearly no risk to the Earth and will provide an astronomical treasure of information about the sixth rock from the Sun. They say that once the mission reaches the Saturnian neighborhood in the year 2004, it also will offer important insights about the planet's icy rings, and about Titan, Saturn's largest moon, which exhibits atmospheric conditions that may have existed on a primordial Earth.A growing opposition, however, argues that the exploration of Saturn should wait until an alternative electrical generating system is developed. These critics—who include some former NASA employees, scientists, and activists—are concerned that the spacecraft's 72.3 pounds of plutonium 238 poses a potential catastrophic risk to the Earth's population, if the substance is released. Cassini carries the most plutonium ever used on a space mission, and NASA says this is the only means for powering the heavy spacecraft in extremely dim sunlight.

NASA shuffle

Samuel W. Keller, an experienced official of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration with a background in engineering, has been named by NASA Administrator Richard Truly to succeed Noel Hinners as Associate Deputy Administrator of NASA, the agency's third‐highest position. Most of the duties of Hinners' other job as NASA Chief Scientist will fall to Lennard Fisk, head of the Office of Space Science arid Applications.Keller's responsibilities will include management of NASA field centers, employees, renovating facilities, and other institutional matters. “‘Everything but the program’ is it's usually characterized,” Keller said of the job in an interview.

4671807 Pollution control device : Jaehn Charlton

BHA Group Inc.'s PrecipTech Power Guard SQ-200 automatic voltage controller, combined with a remote computer, is an automatic management system for smoke-cleaning precipitators. It is the second generation of the SQ 100 developed at Langley Research Center, and was commercialized by two NASA employees. An electrostatic precipitator cleans the smoke by removing particulate matter from smokestack gases before gases are expelled into the atmosphere. Smokestack gas is passed through a precipitator chamber and exposed to an electrostatic field; dust particles in the gas become electrically charged, migrate to collection surfaces and are captured. Developed under a NASA program seeking a way to dispose refuse, the system monitors sparking, automatically adjusts to changes in operating conditions and does not require a skilled operator.

Evaluation of the NASA/JSC blood pressure screening clinic.

This study evaluated the NASA/Johnson Space Center's blood pressure screening program, which was designed to identify the proportion of NASA employees who were hypertensive and to identify self-report variables related to elevated pressures. In 1978, a random sample of 3892 employees was selected from over 2,100 NASA employees. Twenty-eight percent were classified as hypertensive by the criterion of systolic pressure of 140 or above or diastolic pressure of 90 or greater. Approximately 16% of all employees had a history of hypertension; the remaining 12% of the identified hypertensives were unaware of their potential health problem. Multivariate analysis showed that elevated systolic pressures were more prevalent in the older, heavier employees. Of hypertensives under treatment, about 74% were under poor control as judged from blood pressures randomly taken at their place of employment. These results demonstrated the effectiveness of screening for unsuspecting hypertensives in industry.

White collar work load and cortisol: disruption of a circadian rhythm by job stress?

Abstract Perceived white collar work load was studied as a determinant of cortisol, an adrenal hormone with a pronounced circadian rhythm. Two hundred male NASA employees in administration, engineering and science, mean age 40, completed self-report questionnaires and gave blood samples. Respondents were grouped according to the time of day when their blood was sampled and were grouped into high, medium and low tertiles on an index of subjective quantitative work load. There was no main effect of work load on mean cortisol. There was a significant effect of level of work load on the relationship between time of day sampled and cortisol. High work load employees showed lower than normal morning cortisol values and did not show the expected decrease in cortisol from morning to afternoon. Low work load employees showed the expected circadian rhythm. We test two hypotheses which may further explain the results—(1) job satisfaction mediates the effect of work load on circadian rhythm and (2) personality traits produce self-selection into high work load environments—and discuss other interpretations.