Jade McAdams
At the intersection of ideas and action, this is Longitude Sound Bytes, where we bring innovative insights from around the world directly to you.

I’m Jade McAdams Longitude fellow from Rice University. Welcome to our Longitudes of Imagination series where we are exploring the roles of individuals, technologies and research that are helping advance understanding! We spoke with the members of NASA’s Gateway program, which is working on building a small space station that will be in orbit around the Moon. It will come together with the international partnerships that have been established on the International Space Station.

In today’s episode we are featuring highlights from a conversation I led with Jon Olansen the HALO Manager for the Gateway program at NASA.

As a mechanical engineering major, I was interested to hear about the integration of the different components of the Gateway project, and the decision making process behind certain design components, especially in a project with such an impact. We started our conversation with an explanation of the Gateway project and its take home significance.
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Jon Olansen
Most people are familiar with the International Space Station. The ISS is in low Earth orbit. It’s been crewed for over 20 straight years. Gateway is taking lessons learned from that and moving NASA and our international partners out into cislunar space. So we’re actually building a small space station that will be in orbit around the moon. We’ll put that in place with participation, like I said, from NASA, from our partners here within the US, as well as international partners. The first elements we’re launching include a power and propulsion element that is being run out of Glenn Research Center as part of NASA, and Maxar is the prime contractor to develop that. The habitation and logistics outpost, the HALO, is the proximate module that we have responsibility for here at JSC. That’s the first habitable module that will have crew enter in this space station and it’s being built by Northrop Grumman. And then those two elements are actually being integrated on the ground. They’re being put together, and they’ll be launched together on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket here in three years or so. Those will be the first elements of that Gateway Station. After that, we’ll add elements, from ESA for example. ESA is providing a second habitat with some components on the environmental control system provided by JAXA. So we have multinational participation there. The Canadian Space Agency is providing the components for a robotic arm, similar to what they’ve done for the International Space Station. And we have some of those components from all of those partners that also fly on our HALO module, and on the power and propulsion element. So we have a lot of that participation around the world to put this station in orbit.

Our purpose for putting this station in orbit around the moon is really to enable a sustained presence for exploration of cislunar space. It allows for the opportunity for crews to access orbit around the moon, and then from there be able to get to points on the surface of the moon for exploration. It also advances our knowledge of operating away from low earth orbit. That is all things we need to learn in order to move out even beyond cislunar space.

Jade
Awesome. That was a great answer. So I have a few follow up questions just based on that. One question is, with your experiences building this in collaboration with ESA, CSA, JAXA, stuff like that, what do you find to be some of the challenges with working internationally in terms of cooperation and deciding who’s going to do what part of the project, just making sure everything runs smoothly? Do you have experience on that end?

Jon
Absolutely, that’s a great question. I will have to say, really, for decades, there’s been a strong push to have international cooperation and participation in civil space exploration. And so we get to benefit from a lot of that effort. There are still negotiations that have to happen. There’s still the decisions of who’s providing what, who’s developing which parts, who’s operating which parts, but the ability to actually have those conversations, the relationships have now existed for years. And the International Space Station is really a great example of international cooperation for something significantly complex. But it’s a great endeavor, right? And it really brings those countries together. So we really- I know you’re asking for what are the challenges associated with it. There are still challenges in working with any other entity and making sure that the communication is proper and well understood, there’s a common understanding of what people are doing. That’s regardless of whether it’s international or not that you have to go do those things. But because of the partnerships that we’ve built and curated over the years with the ISS, we really are starting in a very good place. And it’s been relatively straightforward for us to build on those relationships and get Gateway in good stead.

Jade
Awesome, well I’m glad to hear that it’s been going smoothly so far. So now moving in a little bit more about your current role. You work as the HALO manager, so I’d love to just hear a little bit more about what that entails, and unique challenges with that position, but also your favorite parts about it.

Jon
Absolutely, and there are a lot of favorite parts so this might take a while. First I’ll give you the scope of the office and what we do. Part of what we’re trying to do with Gateway is be a relatively lean organization and really rely on the developers to bring their experience base, their expertise, and put the effort in needed to get the elements, the modules that we need for Gateway to be successful. There still is a lot of insight and oversight required as a government employee, right, to ensure that we’re getting the right things and that we’re giving them the right requirements. So we have a lot of that work to do. But we’re doing it with a relatively small, nimble, agile team to make sure that we can really grow and adapt to what the Gateway outpost really needs to be. So that sets the framework. We have multiple specific jobs that we’re responsible for. I talked about the initial element launch here in a few years, right, the integrated HALO and PPE. But within our office here, we have responsibility for the development of the module itself, the HALO module. That’s the habitable element that crews will enter, and that’s Northrop Grumman. Like I said, the design and development aspects of it are heavily influenced, though, by what we need for an overall space station. And that’s where we have the office here to make sure that we’re getting what we need. And Northrop is doing a really great job in doing the design and development work there. We’re also responsible for integrating the two elements, the HALO and the PPE. We have the responsibility for integrating those two things together on the ground, making sure that they’re compatible with each other, that we demonstrate that they work together before we launch. And then we have responsibility for actually integrating those with the launch vehicle. So we’ll work with our partners out at the Launch Services Program in Florida and SpaceX to make sure we can then integrate that stacked spacecraft onto the SpaceX Falcon Heavy for launch. So it’ll take us about a year after we launch before we actually get on station around the moon. That’s all part of the plan. So we have that responsibility. The other responsibility that we have beyond those even, is in order to operate the Gateway Station we need an overall software architecture that has increasing levels of autonomy within it to be able to operate the station. One of the differences with the Gateway versus ISS is it’s not going to be crewed year round. ISS had people living on it for over 20 years. For Gateway, it’s going to be a mission at a time. That mission could be up to 30 days, 60 days, possibly. But a large portion of the year is going to be un-crewed. We’re still going to be doing science, we’re still going to have those activities going on, but it’s all going to be autonomous. And so we have an overarching software that basically maintains the whole vehicle and operates the vehicle. We still have ground control that will do some stuff, but that’s part of what we’re balancing. And my office is responsible for the design and development of that software suite as well for that first launch. So we have that breadth of capacity that we’re working to at this point in time.

So if you think about that breadth, there are a lot of challenges that go into pulling all that together. One of the tough things is how we work things on a schedule. Spaceflight takes time to develop items. There’s definitely a balance to strike between rushing and making poor decisions versus making good decisions, but maintaining some urgency to make progress. And that’s one of the biggest challenges, is trying to balance those aspects of design and development, to have the right risk posture to make the right amount of progress and make sure you’re making good decisions along the way.

Favorite things. I got to start with just fabulous people that we have across the country that work on this. You pick any of the contractors that are supporting, the vendors that are supporting, the NASA centers where people are working, and then all the international companies providing too, it’s fabulous to be able to work with such competent, passionate people about what they do, and that makes me enjoy coming to work every day.

Jade
A common thread I’ve noticed, because I’ve done a few of these Longitude interviews for the podcast now, is that everybody who is involved in a project of- not similar magnitude, but just something new and creative, in a sense really likes the people they’re working with and values their team more than anything. So it’s nice to hear that.

One of the things that you mentioned was the autonomous aspect of making sure that software will allow Gateway to operate without people on it 24/7. So what’s the unique design challenge that’s associated with creating something that has that capability?

Jon
So that’s a great question. Just from the technology itself there are challenges. There’s advances in that technology that try to make sure that the breadth of capability can be incorporated into that software, and it can become more and more autonomous. We’ve had software operating things for a long time, and within that, pieces of it will be automated. That’s not the same as autonomous, right? When you add in some of the decision-making aspects associated with that, it becomes significantly more complex as you go. So the technology piece by itself is challenging. And part of the reason we’re doing it the way we’re doing it, and the balance between the onboard capabilities and the ground capabilities, is really the opportunity to evolve those over time with the Gateway so that we can launch in one state, and we can update as we go. We can make Gateway more and more autonomous as we learn more about it and its operations. So we have that capability. And we’re doing that on purpose. So that we can take advantage of advancing the technology while minimizing the actual risks that we’re taking at any point in time for the station itself. So we’re working that balance, but that technology itself is a challenge. But now take that and operate it or try to implement it with so many different entities doing their own design and development with their own fundamental software capabilities for each different element that’s showing up. You’ve got Maxar providing their element with their capabilities, and Northrop’s providing the HALO with their capabilities, and then the international partners and their contractors are providing their elements. And all of it has to end up talking together and having a consistent flow down of management philosophy, fault response, all of those things have to be integrated across those multiple entities. So it really takes that technological challenge and extrapolates it quite a bit, not quite exponentially, but quite a bit in order to really address the multiple parties then that have to participate in it.

Jade
Awesome. Following up on that, it seems like there are quite a few challenges or things that you need to account for when you’re doing something with this much breadth. What is your general problem-solving process? If you face a hurdle and you’re not exactly sure how to get over it right away, what is the first thing that you do? And then everything after that, just curious to know a little bit more about your process.

Jon
That’s great. Decision-making is a key in working in this arena. I am a firm believer in really pushing the authority for making decisions down to the same level of the responsibility for doing the work. So that’s the first thing, is to try to have those things balanced so that decisions are getting made at the right place at the right time. That to me is a really important part of maintaining a pace of progress, is having decision-making at the right place by the right people, the right level within the organization. So that’s the first step. You have to create that culture. You have to create that environment that enables people to be the decision makers at every level, own their responsibility and understand that they have the authority to make those decisions. So that’s step one. It’s all about the culture there.

Step two is a very straightforward start in talking about decisions. It starts with risk posture. It starts with, what is my expectation for risk overall? Spaceflight will never be zero risk. So that’s one of the things that’s understood when you fly in space, but that doesn’t mean, well, there’s going to be risks anyway, what’s one more? You can’t have that attitude. It’s really got to be an understanding of what is your risk posture, and then figuring out how- whatever the issue is that’s being brought, how it fits within that risk posture. And the decision-making process you follow really depends on where that calculus comes out, right? Where is that risk posture relative to the problem that you’re dealing with? Do you need to take time and do more analysis to better understand that problem, or is this something that regardless of which decision you make, it’s not going to change your risk posture? Both are acceptable decisions, and you simply need to make a decision and move on. So all of those are- in my mind, it really boils down to starting with risk posture, and then addressing the individual item within that perspective.

Jade
Yeah, that was a great answer. I loved hearing that you empower the people who have the responsibility to actually make those decisions for themselves, Obviously I’m going to be a fresh grad, and it’s nice to know that maybe I’ll be able to make some decisions in my own career early on. So I loved that. I have so many more questions, but I don’t want to take up too much of your time. One question that I actually have to get answered is, I’d love to hear a little bit more about your journey to- what has led you to be the HALO manager and your career path, projects you’ve worked on, things that have inspired you along the way, and, how you ended up here?

Jon
So my story is, I moved around a lot because that’s what I wanted to do. I had an interest in space from a very early age. Yes, I was one of those who said, I want to be an astronaut when I grow up. To me, I set that as a goal…as a guide. It provided a path. I had a lot of interest in engineering. I specifically chose a school that had aerospace engineering. I got my Bachelor’s and Master’s at Notre Dame. Bachelor’s in aerospace, Master’s then in mechanical, and then I was fortunate enough to be able to come down here to the Johnson Space Center and I started off working in Mission Control. So I was a flight controller for the space shuttle program for seven years. And then I left, took a leave of absence and went to Rice. That’s where I got my PhD, and that was in biomechanical engineering, and then came back to work here at JSC. I worked in the crew office. Because of the bio background I had gotten there, I actually worked on biomedical payloads that were going up to the space station early on when it was first flying. So I was in the astronaut office, working on those as an engineer. At that time, I was actually a contractor working for United Space Alliance, and I had the opportunity to switch to NASA. I worked in the Safety and Mission Assurance area. I worked that for a couple of years, then I worked at headquarters on how to transition assets from space shuttle to the future constellation and Orion programs and what that would look like. And after doing all of those things, I came back to JSC and I worked in our engineering department. And there I was also very fortunate. I had the opportunity to lead a project called Morpheus. That was the Morpheus lander project. It was a research and development project where we used lean development practices to very quickly and cheaply build a flight capability that we could use [to test] technologies that we wanted to advance for future human spaceflight. So we were all about advancing technologies, but we were able to build our own vehicle. I was able to lead that team to put the vehicle together. We flew that vehicle 63 times, and we crashed one and we got that on videos that are out there, and we turned that story into one of perseverance, learning, of growth, and here’s how lean development can actually help you rapidly design, develop and build. We parlayed that into building the crew module for Orion’s ascent abort 2 flight test. So a bunch of that same team moved into that project. And we actually built a replica of the Orion crew module, but with our own avionics, our own software, our own control schemes, to demonstrate that the launch abort system would work to fly crew. We really needed that test to be successful in order for Orion to move forward with putting crew on board. So that actually launched successfully, executed successfully. I was the test director for the launch. And so it was those experiences, it’s all that background that brought me to this point.

Jade
It sounds like you’ve done a little bit of everything. I’m going to finish out by asking, since you have done so much, if there is one thing that you would give as a piece of advice to college students, or fresh out of grad school, young professionals, what would that piece of advice be?

Jon
For me, the biggest thing in my own career, and looking back what I got out of college, was learning how to learn. There’s a basis, absolutely, the engineering basis is really important. There are so many experts in so many different areas trying to run larger projects and programs, I simply can’t know everything in all of those avenues. But I’ve got to be able to learn enough to make smart decisions and be able to balance risk. That’s today’s job. But every job along the way has all been about learning. So that’s the fundamental piece of advice…is enjoy learning, figure out how to make that your path going forward so that you learn how to learn and you put your emphasis on that. You listen to other people. And that’s where your confidence really should come from is, as you gain experience and you’ve learned from others, that you’re confident in making your own decisions and moving forward…but never feel like you know it all. There’s always more to learn.

Jade
That is definitely something that I will be taking with me as I graduate. And I do feel that college has taught me how- more so than engineering itself, problem solving, learning how to adapt. So what do you foresee as being the direction and forward progress that we can make after Gateway, after Artemis? What is your next vision for space exploration?

Jon
So that’s also a good question. A number of folks from the agency- I know Pam Melroy, our deputy administrator, gave a presentation last week at the National Space Symposium about the the blueprint for the future. And that’s a key message right there, the blueprint, Gateway is a way for us to advance technologies and to learn how to operate, as I was describing earlier, out in cislunar space, but it serves as that blueprint for future exploration. So if you’re going to go to Mars, you’re going to think about what orbiting station do I need to have that I can then from there gain access to the surface, right? Those are opportunities then for you to think about, and everything you’ve learned here on Gateway, and how then from Gateway, you’ve had the human landing system and been able to get down to the surface and what the crews have learned from those experiences. You can take those lessons, and you continue to advance that blueprint every step of the way. So Mars is then that next piece, and then beyond from there, but it’s all about- you’re creating a blueprint that you’re able to replicate and advance.
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Jade
Something that stuck out to me during my conversation with Jon was how much he empowers those around him to take on responsibility and grow as individuals and engineers. Throughout his career, Jon has been a part of many important and difficult projects, such as Morpheus, and yet he has always made sure to grow and learn from his team’s challenges to ultimately find success. Now, as HALO manager, Jon tries to create the culture where people feel as though they can make their own decisions and take the responsibility for them.

He also emphasizes learning to learn. Jon believes that adapting, listening to others, and being a problem solver is where your confidence as a leader should come from. I think hearing from Jon that it is important to never feel like you know it all and always continue to learn is a valuable piece of advice that we can all take to heart.

We hope you enjoyed today’s segment. Please feel free to share your thoughts over social media and visit Longitude.site for the episode transcript. Join us next time for more unique insights on Longitude Sound Bytes.