RNASA Stellar Award Sample Nominations
Here are examples of the individual and team nominations of the previous Stellar Award winners.
Individual Category
Example 1:
Despite less than 10 years working in the field, Troy Meink is already one of the most important space technology pioneers in the nation today, developing several true break-out technologies that will change forever how we do business in space. Troy is currently leading the Air Force effort to enable, for the first time, true high power (100kW — 1MW) spacecraft. Troy is also leading the cutting edge of large deployable structures responsible for such innovative concepts at shape memory composite structures and precision deployables an order of magnitude lighter than those being flown today. Troy has a very strong research background coupled with a natural ability to lead that has made him one of the most effective researchers in our organization. In the past few years alone, Troy has made great contributions to several very important fields, including composite manufacturing, launch vehicle structures, large deployable structures, and high power spacecraft.
Over the past decade, Troy has established himself as one of the most important researchers in the area of composite structure fabrication. Specifically, Troy's research into the manufacture of filament wound and fiber placed composite structures has redefined how these structures can and will be built. Troy is the first researcher to effectively match springback and consolidation theories to accurately predict the change in part shape during cure. His theories have led to the first workable springback mitigation technique, which in a demonstration in 1998, eliminated 95% of the springback in several USAF structures. This research, and its results, will have a far-reaching impact on composite structure manufacture for decades to come.
Troy's greatest impact has been his development and leadership of the Space Vehicles Directorate's new high power spacecraft initiative. This effort has developed a revolutionary new concept that promises to increase by an order of magnitude the amount of power available to spacecraft at just a fraction of the cost. The "PowerSail" concept incorporates many of the latest spacecraft bus technologies, most importantly flexible thin film photovoltaics, to create a revolutionary clean-sheet redesign of the solar array subsystem. The PowerSail promises to achieve a specific energy of 500 W/kg, a cost of $200/W, and a packaging efficiency of over 100 kW/m3; this performance is a 5-10x improvement over traditional arrays and is truly a break-through in the field of spacecraft engineering. This very innovative concept will be critical to many future high power space systems, leading the USAF to invest approximately $10M/year to develop the concept. Several large companies and government funding agencies (including DoD, NASA, BMDO & NRO) have recognized the extraordinary potential of this concept and have offered matching funds several times to the Air Force investment in this area.
In the mid-1990s, Troy led a team that pioneered the introduction of composite grid-stiffened structures into launch vehicle components. After over a decade of failed attempts, in both the US and (former) USSR, Troy single handedly assembled and led a multidisciplinary team that made the necessary key breakthroughs to make grid stiffened structures a feasible and attractive structural option. Troy's team built the first flight ready grid stiffened structure, a payload shroud for a BMDO mission. This shroud performed flawlessly and achieved a 61% weight savings over the aluminum shroud that it replaced. Despite the weight savings, it was over three times stronger and 10 times stiffer than the same aluminum shroud. This technology has now been transferred to the Boeing Company, which has spent almost $1M to perform the transfer. Under Troy's guidance, Boeing is using it to double the payload capability of the USAF Minotaur launch vehicle. This technology has also been baselined by the Boeing Company for its Space-Based Radar structure concept and is being considered for future Sealaunch and aircraft structures. As part of the development effort, Troy developed a revolutionary tooling concept, Hybrid Tooling, which is currently being patented by the USAF, and developed several structure buckling models which will, certainly, be referenced by space structure designers for many years to come.
In summary, Troy's tireless efforts, innovative thinking, leadership skills, and strong advocacy has led to a great leap in space structures technology and promises a revolution in high power spacecraft for DoD and NASA applications. Troy now leads a team of researchers and technicians that are working on over 15 different research programs, four of which are for flight experiments and operational systems from multiple organizations including BMDO, NASA, SMC, AFRL and NRO. Troy is now recognized as a world leader in these areas often being asked to speak internationally as well as at multiple domestic organizations. Troy truly shows great potential to make a real, significant, and lasting contribution to the national and international space communities.
Example 2:
Colonel Glen Collins is an Army pioneer in the Space Operations field. Since 1996 he has served in key roles that have influenced current and future space activities throughout the military. He has a unique ability to translate his expert knowledge of space capabilities into military operational terms. His work in orchestrating and synchronizing military space activities has led to numerous successes in headline-news level military operations. He has served as one of the leaders in the complex behind the scenes work of operationalizing space for our nation's military forces.
From 1996 to 1999 he served at USSPACECOM as Vice Division Chief of Current Operations and Chief of Future Operations Branch. He developed organizational structures and practices to implement a new mission directed by the U.S. President's Unified Command Plan for 1997. The new mission designated United States Space Command as the single point of contact for military space operations. Colonel Collins immediately established detailed procedures to bring together disparate space activities and assets. He wrote comprehensive plans and orders to ensure the right space support was provided to warfighting operations around the world. His leadership in the USSPACECOM's Crisis Action Center ensured his plans were successfully real-time tested in 1998 supporting Iraqi "No Fly Zone" protection in Operation Desert Fox. The plans were again remarkably executed by synchronizing space support for the Kosovo Air Campaign in 1999. His extraordinary work has led to wide recognition of him as one of the military's primary experts in policy and doctrinal issues concerning command and control of space forces.
Colonel Collins is a polished speaker with an in-depth understanding of the broad spectrum of space operations. He was frequently hand-picked by the Commander in Chief (CINC), USSPACECOM to brief numerous groups of visiting dignitaries about the mission and functions of the command. A trusted agent, he also was selected to represent the CINC at Department of Defense agencies and Joint Staff meetings at the Pentagon to champion and implement space operations into unified and combined organizations.
A gifted writer and visionary thinker, in spring 2000 he culminated his studies at the Army War College by publishing an important paper entitled "The Integration of Space Forces in the Unified Command Structure." The paper addresses national level policy decisions on how to resource and train space forces. Colonel Collins contributes to strategic military discussion and debate as evidenced in his recent book review on Colin S. Gray's book, Modern Strategy, in "Parameters," Winter 2000-1001.
Colonel Collins currently serves as the Director of the Force Development and Integration Center at the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Virginia. Colonel Collins continues to lead the Army's advancements in the utilization of space technology. His is a respected voice to the congressionally appointed Space Commission, the body assessing US national security space management and organization. He also serves as the spokesman to integrate Space into the Army Chief of Staff's Transformation initiatives. Additionally, in his FDIC role he has a far-reaching impact on the future space leaders in the Army. He is responsible for developing and expanding the new career field of Space Operations for the Army. Because of his renowned expertise and commitment, he was selected to spearhead efforts to design a career path and coordinate a training course for Army Space Operations specialists. As a result of his work, Army officers will attend the first career course starting in June 2001.
During the past several years Colonel Glen Collins has made immeasurable contributions to space operations, current and future, in the Army and in unified commands. His exceptional ability in applying military operational experience to space support for critical real-world operations has led to resounding success. His visionary approach and commitment to building future space leaders in the Army will benefit unified commands and the nation for years to come.
Example 3:
Dr. Howard has been responsible for a stunning breakthrough in the study of solar-terrestrial relations with the development of high quality coronagraphs to study the sun's atmosphere from space platforms. His investigations have led to the first major predictive capability in the new area of space weather — the advance warning of geomagnetic storms based on the emergence of CMEs from sun's lower atmosphere. Coronal imagery from Howard's space instrument on the SOHO has provided scientists with an entirely new perspective on the interplanetary medium near the sun.
Observing the sun's corona is an ancient activity since this outer portion of the sun's atmosphere becomes visible for about a minute during total solar eclipses. Since the 1930s, when instruments were developed for artificially creating eclipses, ground-based observations of the corona have become a standard tool of the solar physics community. Imagery of the solar corona was one of the early objectives of space researchers since the darkness of the space sky affords a far better view of the corona. Dr. Howard has been one of the leaders in achieving that promise, having been involved with every NRL space coronagraph, except for those flown on early sounding rockets. The discovery of CMEs emerged from this work. These are enormous clouds of gas, still poorly understood, blasting off from the sun with high velocity and generating a major perturbation in the interplanetary medium. As part of his work on the SOLWIND coronagraphs for the P78-1 mission flown by DoD, Dr. Howard, for the first time, described the characteristics of earthward directed CMEs and their subsequent geomagnetic activity. He demonstrated that the emergence of CMEs at the sun could be used as a predictor of geomagnetic activity. Howard and his colleagues accumulated and published a massive database of CMEs that has been the principal source of information about them until the emergence of the LASCO data.
Dr. Howard was the project scientist on NRL's LASCO instrument that was launched on the SOHO in 1995. LASCO, a 75M$ instrument, involved the design, construction and integration of three separate coronagraphs developed by NRL and its European partners. In spite of its sophistication and complexity and the need to integrate the work of five different institutions the instrument was delivered on time and within cost. It has operated flawlessly since launch. Aside from his work as the project scientist, Dr. Howard was responsible for the development of the CCD cameras used in each of the coronagraph focal planes. After the death of the principal investigator, Gunter Brueckner, Dr Howard became the principal investigator and has guided the program since. The data from LASCO have had an enormous impact on solar physics. The spectacular images are made possible by the quality of the CCD cameras and the wide field of view of the instrument (30 times the radius of the sun). The images routinely make the national news and have been the subject of an IMAX production (SolarMax, produced by John Weiley). Geomagnetic storms at the Earth are now being routinely predicted with 2-3 days advance warning by NOAA's Solar Environmental Laboratory in Boulder based on the use of LASCO imagery.
Dr. Howard has been an unsung hero in solar physics. Until recently his contributions have been in the background as the patient investigator and the diligent project scientist. His leadership qualities have come forward when he assumed the direction of LASCO. Not only has he been guiding the development of the observing plans of the instrument and the analysis of the resulting data, but also he has taken the lead in the development of the next generation space coronagraph. He is the principal investigator for the program to develop the coronagraphs for the STEREO mission, planned for a 2004 launch. The NRL instrument, SECCHI, is a multi-institutional effort and involves instruments for two spacecraft. The two will operate from widely separated positions in orbit around the sun, fore and aft of the Earth, in order to obtain stereoscopic images of coronal mass ejections to improve the ability to predict geomagnetic storms and yield better scientific information regard these and other coronal structures. SECCHI is enormously challenging, involving the delivery of more hardware for far less funding compared to LASCO.
Team Category
Following the Delta 269 flight failure in May 1999 and subsequent failure investigation, the Delta III Return-to-Flight team was tasked with: 1) confirming the identified failure, 2) implementing corrective actions, 3) conducting a rigorous mission assurance process to ensure a successful next flight. The successful effort of this team was extremely important to prove the reliability of the Delta III launch vehicle after two previous failures, as well as demonstrate the reliability of the Delta III upper stage (which is common with Delta IV). The future of the U.S. Government's space launch vehicles is the EELV program, of which Delta IV is a major part.
The Return-to-Flight effort led by Dave Crosse, Director of Delta Mission Assurance, was supported by a wide cross section of the Government and contractor aerospace community including Boeing, Pratt & Whitney, The Aerospace Corporation, U.S. Air Force, NASA, Boeing Rocketdyne, and Lockheed Martin. The team's dedication, innovation, and technical excellence led to the successful flight of the Delta III DM-F3 mission.
The Delta 269 Failure Review Board found that the
failure was caused by a breach of the Pratt & Whitney RL-10 engine
combustion chamber. Deficiencies were found in the braze process used
to manufacture the engine which reduced its structural capability resulting
in rupture of the chamber at second burn ignition.
In addition to confirming the identified failure mode, the RTF team investigated other areas for potential contributory causes to ensure the root cause was isolated and fixed. Pratt & Whitney was an integral part of the RTF team and conducted most of the testing and analysis. The failure mode was confirmed through testing (including a hydrostat test) and extensive structural modeling and nonlinear analysis which showed that the chamber strength capability was marginal-to-negative in the failure area. Three separate analysis teams(Boeing, Pratt & Whitney, The Aerospace Corporation) developed independent models of the combustion chamber to prove the design of the chamber was satisfactory. The joint engineering efforts of the Boeing and Pratt teams furthered the development of finite element modeling techniques representing highly complex geometries and highly elastic materials. These models helped anchor coupon test results with flight predictions, ultimately justifying the process improvements made to the thrust chamber structural jacket and other engine structure.
More than twenty ignition and hot-fire tests were run on an engine to prove start transients were not inducing braze damage. Good margins were demonstrated even under adverse conditions. This series of engine testing required great ingenuity to simulate the various in-flight worst case conditions in the test stand, requiring very complex test set-ups. The boost phase loads were absolved as a contributor by engine modal testing, coupled loads analysis and a vibration test that showed the boost loads were low and well within engine capabilities. This intense test and analysis program substantially increased the body of knowledge and understanding of the RL10 engine and Delta III stage. The structural and thermodynamic models (anchored with test data), analytical tools and results will serve Boeing, Pratt & Whitney and the industry for years to come.
In addition to the activities confirming the failure, further actions were taken to ensure no other latent weaknesses were lurking in other components. Pratt & Whitney conducted a review of the engine qual test program that confirmed it was properly designed and tested for all operating conditions. Pratt & Whitney manufacturing and inspection processes were audited by a team of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Aerospace Corp. and Government experts and recommended improvements were implemented. All Delta vehicle flight critical components were subjected to extra-ordinary reviews of their pedigree and quality. Vehicle analyses that are not verifiable by test were independently reviewed by Aerospace Corp. engineers.
Corrective actions were implemented for the combustion chamber manufacturing processes that have resulted in near-perfect chambers since October 1999 for the Delta, Atlas — Centaur and Titan — Centaur programs. Twenty-eight other actions were implemented to improve the operation of the Delta III, increase margins and robustness.
The Delta III DM-F3 mission was successfully launched on 23 August 2000. All vehicle systems were validated and vehicle performance was within predictions. A large amount of special instrumentation was flown which demonstrated all the Return-to-Flight analysis and modifications were successful. The successful DM-F3 Return-to-Flight mission demonstrated the operational status of the launch vehicle, proved the operation of the second stage as a critical element of the DIV launch vehicle and added another proven product offered by Boeing for access to space.