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The idea of milestones is an old one. When the ancient Romans
built roads across Europe, they placed special stones at the
sides of the roadways at regular intervals. Travelers could
use these stones as identifiers to mark their progress.
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Courtesy
of Jet Propulsion Laboratory /
Los Alamos National Laboratory |
A NASA mission may be thought of as a journey through the
stages that engineers refer to as "design, build, and test."
Designing, building, and testing all the hardware and software
components of a NASA mission means completing a sequence of
tasks in a particular order to get the job done. This journey
culminates in the launch and operation of the spacecraft,
and the fulfillment of the mission's science objectives. Just
like a journey over roads, milestones are established to chart
the progress of a mission.
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Courtesy
of Jet Propulsion Laboratory /
Los Alamos National Laboratory |
Wendy Ellery, planning and control manager for the Genesis
mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, receives monthly
written reports and weekly oral reports from all mission partner
agencies. They report to Ms. Ellery on their progress toward
the established mission milestones. She keeps track of all
this information with a computer program called Microsoft
Project.
Her tracking system looks at different components of the
payload, the sample return capsule, and the spacecraft. The
system then combines any progress into an analysis of the
status of system integration and testing called ATLO (assembly,
test, launch operations). She states, "The most recent major
milestone [the mission] passed was the ATLO Readiness Review
on October 5. The next really big one will be the Spacecraft
Pre-ship Review, to be held around mid-September in 2000."
This milestone, when passed, will mean that the spacecraft
and its sample return capsule are ready to journey to Kennedy
Space Center to prepare for the Genesis launch in July 2001.
Recent Major Accomplishments
Johnson
Space Center Genesis Mission Cleanroom Certified (07-99)
Solar Wind Concentrator
Assembled at Los Alamos National Laboratory (08-00) |
