I’m continually inspired by River’s posts about his career and experience at Goddard. I’ve been meaning to post for quite some time about the experience I’ve had within the Space Life Sciences Directorate at
As Rivers pointed out in his previous post, on April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin, became the first man to orbit the Earth. The United States launched the first space shuttle on April 12, 1981. This year actually marks the 50th anniversary of NASA! This Saturday marks the 47th anniversary of Gagarin’s 108-minute flight and his one orbit mission that ended as he parachuted from the Vostok 1 capsule onto the plains of Central Asia. I see this as a reason to celebrate and I’m not the only one! With the recent confirmation of a Yuri’s Night party planned for Antarctica’s South Pole Station there are now 176 celebrations in 49 countries in 7 continents on 2 worlds!
For the second straight year, the crew on the International Space Station has released a video greeting to all Yuri’s Night parties. Commander Peggy Whitson, Garrett Reisman and Yuri Malenchenko of Expedition 16 say hello “to everyone down on Planet Earth celebrating Yuri’s Night”, and talk about the beauty of Earth and the importance of April 12th in astronomical history. If you haven’t had a chance to see the greeting yet, check it out here.
Bill Gates testified before Congress today on the future of innovation and
Thank you Delia for summarizing the outcome of the sustainability panel at the 3rd Annual AIAA Space Exploration Conference. I would have loved to have been there in person but I was attending the Project Management Challenge (PMC) 2008 in 
It’s been very interesting to watch the Generation Y message make it’s way through the NASA world, up and down the lines of management everywhere. Most exciting is receiving emails from leaders around the agency and watching the NASA organization flatten (a little) before our eyes! I personally never imagined at the beginning of all this that a) NASA would listen, and b) that NASA would be so passionate about improving, growing and changing. I guess looking back, it only makes sense - NASA is filled with thousands of employees who are extremely brilliant, want to participate and who are here to change the world through exploration - no matter what generation.
A few months ago a few of us had a chance to participate on a “strategic communications committee” at Johnson Space Center that was convened to discuss NASA’s strategic communications strategy released in ‘07. After a few meetings on the committee, we asked if we could share our perspective with the group on why we think an entire generation isn’t connecting to NASA. A few amazing mentors at Johnson Space Center from the Advanced Planning Office empowered us to participate. Since then we’ve given the presentation numerous times to everyone from PAO and HR to Constellation and a number of other organizations throughout the agency. One of the main underlying points in the presentation is that our generation wants to be involved in space exploration. We want to be involved in the innovation. We want to be part of the discussion. We expect to participate.This week we had the opportunity to participate in the NGEC-2 Conference at Ames Research Center in California. Garret Fitzpatrick and I gave the presentation - and to our surprise, even had a chance to present it to Buzz Aldrin since he was at the conference. ARC Center Director Pete Worden - who has ignited a movement at NASA (@CoLab) - was also present and was encouraging as ever. Looking back, it was a really interesting experience to present to a man who has inspired thousands of people throughout the world through by something many of us dream of doing - walking on the moon. My expectation is that our generation will soon follow in his footsteps and participate ourselves - but it will require engaging a generation to do so…This presentation has been created so that anyone who wants to can take it and use it. Share this with your management. Share this with your parents. Share it with people who don’t understand why you like to snowboard in the afternoon, work from “offsite” on your mac, use Twitter to communicate with your friends, and expect to be involved in the “big picture” at work. Here’s a link to the presentation. Post a comment if you use it or have feedback… and look forward to a follow-up presentation currently in the works!
Recent Comments