2.1 NASA Short History
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration which was established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower is the United States government agency responsible for civilian space program as aeronautic and aerospace research. When it began operations on October 1, 1958, NASA absorbed the 46-year-old National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NACA. A significant contributor to NASA's entry into the Space Race with the Soviet Union was the technology from the German rocket program led by Wernher Von Braun, who was now working for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, ABMA, which in turn incorporated the technology of American scientist Robert Goddard's earlier works. In December 1958, NASA gained control of the …show more content…
Unmanned programs launched the first American artificial satellites into Earth orbit for scientific and communications purposes, and sent scientific probes to explore the planets of the solar system, starting with Venus and Mars, and including "grand tours" of the outer planets. Manned programs sent the first Americans into low Earth orbit (LEO), won the Space Race with the Soviet Union by landing twelve men on the Moon from 1969 to 1972 in the Apollo program, developed a semi-reusable LEO Space Shuttle, and developed LEO space station capability by itself and with the cooperation of several other nations including post-Soviet Russia.
2.2 NASA Systems Engineering Fundamentals
In the NASA systems engineering handbook, the systems engineer is skilled in the art and science of balancing organizational and technical interactions in complex systems. However, since the entire team is involved in the systems engineering approach, in some way everyone is a systems engineering. The handbook also provides some systems engineering side of the diagram. The three processes shown in Figure 1 are used by NASA. 2.3 NASA Program/Project Life …show more content…
In this portion of the engine, eight crosscutting processes, step 10 to step 17, provide the integration of the crosscutting functions that allow the design solution to be realized. Every member of the technical team relies on technical planning; management of requirements, interfaces, technical risk, configuration, and technical data; technical assessment; and decision analysis to meet the project’s objectives. Without these crosscutting processes, individual members and tasks cannot be integrated into a functioning system that meets the CONOPs within cost and