1. Introduction:
On December 3, 1999, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) lost communication with its Mars Polar Lander (MPL) and Deep Space 2 (DS2) after an attempt to land on Mars. The failure of the mission was a blow to NASA Mars program. The loss of MPL was fully investigated by a Special Review Board (the Board) to prevent the same mistakes in the future missions.
Later, the report revealed that when the lander touchdowned, a software glitch might had made the engine premature shut down and crashed on the landing site. The report also shed the light in public on how the program was bid, what were the problem with the management chain that lead problematic development and result in the failure. This report is the …show more content…
With the previous mission was a huge success, NASA wanted to make things a little different this time. To cope with budget reduction, NASA had a new mantra "faster, better, cheaper" approach (Thompson 7). Compare with the Mars Pathfinder, the budget of MPL was cut in half. It cost only 193.1 million dollars for the whole program of spacecraft development and launching (Mars 254). The report suggested that the project was under budget by 30%. To save money, NASA used contractor so it could reduce cost and development time. Lockheed Martin Astronautics (LMA) was chosen to be the prime contractor for MPL project.
3. Contractor:
Since LMA won the contract, the project was heavily relied on the LMA engineer structure rather than the former experienced JPL team. Soon, LMA realized its systems engineering resources were insufficient to meet the needs of the project. To solve the problem, LMA decided to utilize the reuse the software and hardware from various sources. This made the project management become difficult and complicated the testing process.
4. …show more content…
LMA was the victim of “winner's curse” when it won the contract and had to execute it within the budget. According to Mr. Young, a retired executive vice president of the Lockheed Martin Corporation, it “forced engineers of NASA and Lockheed Martin to cut corners and take unnecessary risks to save money and meet deadlines.”(Leary 68). Instead of create a team of experienced engineers, LMA used a large number of new engineer “as a result of the need for faster and cheaper programs” (Sachi 17). The new engineers simply do what they are told and did not have the experience to see the bigger picture. This is easy for mistake to slip by under the pressure and deadlines. The larger team require more communication and testing as well as oversight. For project with time constraint like MPL, a team consist of veterans engineer would save more money with better result in the
On December 3, 1999, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) lost communication with its Mars Polar Lander (MPL) and Deep Space 2 (DS2) after an attempt to land on Mars. The failure of the mission was a blow to NASA Mars program. The loss of MPL was fully investigated by a Special Review Board (the Board) to prevent the same mistakes in the future missions.
Later, the report revealed that when the lander touchdowned, a software glitch might had made the engine premature shut down and crashed on the landing site. The report also shed the light in public on how the program was bid, what were the problem with the management chain that lead problematic development and result in the failure. This report is the …show more content…
With the previous mission was a huge success, NASA wanted to make things a little different this time. To cope with budget reduction, NASA had a new mantra "faster, better, cheaper" approach (Thompson 7). Compare with the Mars Pathfinder, the budget of MPL was cut in half. It cost only 193.1 million dollars for the whole program of spacecraft development and launching (Mars 254). The report suggested that the project was under budget by 30%. To save money, NASA used contractor so it could reduce cost and development time. Lockheed Martin Astronautics (LMA) was chosen to be the prime contractor for MPL project.
3. Contractor:
Since LMA won the contract, the project was heavily relied on the LMA engineer structure rather than the former experienced JPL team. Soon, LMA realized its systems engineering resources were insufficient to meet the needs of the project. To solve the problem, LMA decided to utilize the reuse the software and hardware from various sources. This made the project management become difficult and complicated the testing process.
4. …show more content…
LMA was the victim of “winner's curse” when it won the contract and had to execute it within the budget. According to Mr. Young, a retired executive vice president of the Lockheed Martin Corporation, it “forced engineers of NASA and Lockheed Martin to cut corners and take unnecessary risks to save money and meet deadlines.”(Leary 68). Instead of create a team of experienced engineers, LMA used a large number of new engineer “as a result of the need for faster and cheaper programs” (Sachi 17). The new engineers simply do what they are told and did not have the experience to see the bigger picture. This is easy for mistake to slip by under the pressure and deadlines. The larger team require more communication and testing as well as oversight. For project with time constraint like MPL, a team consist of veterans engineer would save more money with better result in the