NASA manager highlights teamwork, communication

According to Watson-Morgan, effective communication, strong teamwork, and studying past successes and failures, as well as the risk culture of other government agencies, help the collective NASA-industry-stakeholder team understand the risks, develop solutions to minimize them, and accept what risks cannot be eliminated.

NASA and the spaceflight industry will use the Moon as a testbed to further evaluate and demonstrate technologies, processes and procedures needed to send humans to Mars.

“On the Moon, we can take reasonable risks while astronauts are just three days from home,” Watson-Morgan said. “There we will prove technologies and mature systems necessary to live and work on another world before embarking on what could be a two- to three-year mission to Mars.”