Previous OCKO Workshops
| Date | Workshop Title | Description |
| May 2023 | OSIRIS-REx Skirting Disaster: Planning, Luck, and Unlikely Events (with Jason Dworkin) |
The Chief Knowledge Officer, Moses Adoko, in collaboration with the Project Scientist for the OSIRIS-REx mission, Jason Dworkin, presented a virtual Knowledge Sharing Workshop to discuss what we can learn from a historic planetary mission that successfully explored and collected a sample from an asteroid. The OSIRIS-REx mission was designed to study a mysterious carbonaceous asteroid called Bennu. One aspect of the mission’s complexity is the maneuver captured as “Touch-And-Go” accomplished by a robotic arm with a sampler head. But what were the challenges and noted successes experienced by the team? How did they plan to get it done and what really happened? |
| December 2022 | A Parallel Structure to Risk Management: EEE Parts & Printed Circuit Boards (with Jesse Lietner) | This Knowledge Sharing Workshop discussed the anatomy of technical lessons. In this talk, they recommended a structure to be followed for lessons learned, to ensure that they are complete, valid, and based on the root cause(s) of the events, if understood. The structure, which is based on GSFC’s risk management approach and risk statement structure, promotes the necessary critical thinking about capturing the right lesson. This structure was followed up with several examples of lessons that come from electronic parts and printed circuit board failures, anomalies, and acceptance challenges. |
| September 2022 | The Ceramic Capacitor Saga: Failures, Wrong Lessons and Right Lessons (with Jesse Lietner) | This Knowledge Sharing Workshop discussed what we can learn from capacitor failures. This presentation stepped through time and highlighted a single electronic part manufacturing problem that has haunted the space community for over a decade, masking in the form of traditional part installation instruction violations, purported sloppy workmanship, and conflicts with other mainstream warnings. |
| February 2022 | Hubble in the Era of JWST (with Jennifer Wiseman) | What will the Hubble Space Telescope be up to, now that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is launched? Hubble is as scientifically active as ever, and Webb is poised for incredible new discoveries. The Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer, in collaboration with Jennifer Wiseman, presented highlights of Hubble’s current and planned studies of the solar system, stars, exoplanets, galaxies and cosmology, and the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. |
| December 2021 | Risk-Based Safety and Mission Assurance in Action (with Jesse Lietner) | The Chief Knowledge Officer, Moses Adoko, in collaboration with Jesse Leitner, presented a virtual Knowledge Sharing Workshop to discuss risk-based SMA in action. Risk-based SMA is a guiding principle for achieving safe and successful missions with limited resources. GSFC’s risk-based SMA practices work to align SMA requirements with the mission’s risk posture and design architecture. This greatly reduces the risk that the process of assigning requirements has missed a critical one or is imposing one that will excessively drive up programmatic risk. |
| October 2021 | Engineering Peer Reviews for Mission Success: Do’s and Don’ts (with Tim Trenkle) | The Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO), Moses Adoko, in collaboration with Tim Trenkle presented a virtual Knowledge Sharing Workshop to discuss the benefits of Engineering Peer Reviews. Milestone reviews are designed to help assess technical and programmatic status of a mission, program, or project at milestone gates. The milestone reviews are, by design, at a very high level of technical detail. Engineering peer reviews, on the other hand, should provide an independent, detailed technical assessment of mission areas that are challenging where independent technical expertise is valuable. |
| June 2021 | Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer: High Stakes, High Voltage on Mars (with Brian Ottens) | Chief Knowledge Officer Moses Adoko, in collaboration with Brian Ottens, presented a virtual Knowledge Sharing Workshop to discuss selected risks faced by the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer-Mass Spectrometer (MOMA-MS) project. Planetary missions face unique challenges such as infrequent launch windows, tight mass budgets, fewer designs with high TRLs, and a smaller supplier community. Brian shared insights on how the team addressed technical risks on their way to delivering the right system for the Rosalind Franklin Rover. |
| May 2021 | Merging Engineering Approaches to Overcome Technical Challenges- Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (with Jeff Volosin) | The Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer in collaboration with Jeffrey Volosin presented a virtual Knowledge Sharing Workshop to discuss the creative approaches taken by the TESS team to merge different/ divergent engineering development frameworks from multiple organizations (including NASA GSFC, MIT, Space-X/Northrup Grumman, and MIT Lincoln Laboratory) into a single coherent approach to enable mission success. |
| April 2021 | Perspectives on Discovering Habitable Worlds (with Bethany Theiling) | The OCKO presented a virtual Knowledge Sharing Workshop about the different ways a world can be habitable or used to be habitable. Different perspectives allow us to be strategic in choosing and refining the technology that is best suited to evaluate the habitability for each planetary system. |
| December 2020 | Lessons Learned from LRO (with Noah Petro) | The Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer presented Dr. Noah Petro for a virtual Knowledge Sharing Workshop about critical lessons from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission on how scientists and engineers were able to collaborate effectively to enable mission success. LRO is a scientific exploration mission to study the geology and biology of the moon and to survey and identify potential sites for future robotic and human lunar missions. |
| August 2020 | Reflecting on Organizational Risk Posture through System Failure Analysis (with Mike Lipka and Steve Lilley) | The Goddard Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer (OCKO) and the NASA Safety Center (NSC) presented an online case study workshop discussion of two cases highlighting the differences and similarities in organizational risk posture. The content of the case studies included the failure of a Royal Air Force reconnaissance aircraft and the failure of NASA’s Genesis sample return capsule parachute to open during re-entry. |
| May 2020 | Lessons Learned About a Technology’s TRL (with Ari Brown) | The Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer presented Ari Brown who spoke about “Lessons Learned About a Technology’s TRL” The inherent difficulty to capture the true maturity state of key capabilities and TRL thresholds can introduce performance risks for projects dependent on new technologies. This conversation explored project lessons that demonstrate how assessing the TRL of new technologies and other key drivers of mission success impacts mission outcome. |
| April 2020 | Radiation Hardness Drivers for Mission Success (with Mike Campola) | The Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer in collaboration with Michael Campola held a Knowledge Sharing Workshop about radiation hardness and how radiation testing is an essential component of mission success. The impacts created by radiation cause vulnerabilities in small satellites and their larger, traditional relatives. While moving to COTS components and systems may reduce direct costs and procurement lead times, it undermines many cost-reduction strategies used for conventional radiation hardness assurance (RHA). |
Workshop Recordings
A limited number of the OCKO’s workshops are recorded to later viewing. You can find them below:
What will the Hubble Space Telescope be up to, now that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is launched? Hubble is as scientifically active as ever, and Webb is poised for incredible new discoveries. Join the Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer, in collaboration with Jennifer Wiseman, as we present highlights of Hubble’s current and planned studies of the solar system, stars, exoplanets, galaxies and cosmology, and the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.
For more information on these workshops or to request a future workshop, contact gsfc-chief-knowledge-officer@mail.nasa.gov