Systems Engineering Technical Excellence Award
Systems Engineering (SE) is a core competency of NASA’s highly skilled workforce and has been recognized as one of the foundations of the Agency’s success in the Apollo program and many other Programs and Projects since then. Scroll down to learn more.
Overview
Systems Engineering (SE) is a core competency of NASA’s highly skilled workforce and has been recognized as one of the foundations of the Agency’s success in the Apollo program and many other Programs and Projects since then.
NASA teams and organizations are increasingly employing well-defined, proven processes and practices to develop, manage, and integrate increasingly complex systems. The successful application of these principles is a challenge that requires not only knowledge of SE but also artful implementation that may apply SE in new ways to meet the unique needs of the Agency.
Projects across the Agency are evaluated on their demonstration of verifiable contributions utilizing recognized best practices in the art and science of SE, SE leadership qualities and innovative techniques, stakeholder satisfaction, and system complexity. Many highly qualified projects and efforts were nominated by their Centers and all should be recognized for their exemplary performance.
Please use the links in the navigation menu to navigate to the honorees by year.
2024 Honorees
The Office of the Chief Engineer (OCE) is pleased to announce the selections for the 2024 System Engineering Technical Excellence Award (SETEA). Systems Engineering (SE) is a core competency of NASA’s highly skilled workforce. Our organizations and personnel are masterfully employing and scaling well-defined, proven processes and practices to successfully develop, manage, and integrate increasingly complex systems. In addition, we are applying new innovative techniques and tools to improve our SE effectiveness. The successful application of these principles, tools, and techniques requires not only technical expertise in SE, but also a logical and artful implementation. This award recognizes and showcases extensible examples of SE throughout NASA.
Congratulations to teams selected for the 2024 SETEA:
Systems Engineering Excellence Category
Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) Project
Lead Center: LaRC
The TEMPO Systems Engineering (SE) team exemplified SE excellence to deliver NASA’s first Earth Venture Instrument or EVI (cost-capped, PI led) to Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO) as NASA’s first complex commercially hosted payload through tailoring of NASA’s SE processes in a pathfinding effort that is now achieving revolutionary Earth Science at a fraction of the cost for a dedicated mission.
Advancement of SE Category
Requirement Discovery using embedded Knowledge Graph with ChatGPT
Lead Center: LaRC
The team integrated the ChatGPT with a graph database and graph data science capabilities readily available in a tool. The ChatGPT acts as an intermediary between the user and the database, translating user questions into database queries and database responses into human-readable answers for the user. The SE team reported that this system has increased their speed of requirement creation by seven times faster than general processes, and that requirements generated by this system are in some cases more creative than those created by the human users.
The ChatGPT with graph database and graph data science overcomes the shortcoming of the out-of-the-box ChatGPT, especially in hallucination. The approach allows systems engineers to utilize the powerful graph database algorithms found within the Neo4J tool, giving them the ability to analyze connections between existing requirements and actors, predict new connections, and generate new requirements that are comparable to those created by subject matter experts. By using the ChatGPT as a translational layer, general users are not required to possess existing knowledge of how to formulate graph database queries, and since the information within the database has been curated by Urban Air Mobility researchers, the chances of the ChatGPT hallucinating information are greatly reduced. The ChatBot has been actively used in the Airspace Operations and Safety Program’s Air Traffic Management – eXploration Project for requirement definition for the last six months, and this evolving technique has greatly increased productivity throughout the SE teams within the project and could be a benefit to SEs at the Center, Agency, and to others outside of NASA. This innovative approach to an SE application could be applied to other use cases, such as generating candidate system architectures based on historical architectures of similar systems; predicting project’s risks based on risk registry database; and assisting with candidate requirements based on project’s technical documents.
SE Inspiration Category
#1 KSC – Lunabotics Systems Engineering Judges Team
#2 JSC – Lunabotics Systems Engineering Judges Team
The Lunabotics SE Judges Team truly inspires the next generation of systems engineers. Lunabotics provides accredited institutions of higher learning students (vocational-technical, college, university) an opportunity to apply the NASA systems engineering process to design and build a prototype robot.
Many Lunabotics SE Judges report that Lunabotics energizes them in their own SE experiences including being inspired by the students!
KSC hosts the only university/college level competition that explicitly includes a systems engineering (SE) element. This competition requires students to exercise the practices of SE throughout the entire project life cycle, from ideation to disposal of their robots. Since its inception in 2010, over 180 different universities/colleges have fielded teams (many over multiple years) with over 6,000 students participating.
The Lunabotics SE Judges Team, led by JSC and with a majority of judges from JSC, provides teaching/training of SE methods through 1) their judging of the Systems Engineering paper with extensive feedback, 2) by providing SE training classes and videos, and 3) by hosting student and faculty round table sessions at the competitions. This improves the student teams’ subsequent SE efforts, whether in the next competition or at their first job. The Lunabotics SE Judges Team has truly expanded the awareness of, and provided practical experience in, systems engineering to more students and universities/colleges than any other endeavor at NASA.
2023 Honorees
The Office of the Chief Engineer (OCE) is pleased to announce the selections for the 2023 Systems Engineering Technical Excellence Award. Systems Engineering (SE) is a core competency of NASA’s highly skilled workforce and has been recognized as one of the foundations of the Agency’s success in the Apollo program and many other Programs and Projects since then. NASA teams are masterfully employing and scaling well-defined, proven processes and practices to successfully develop, manage, and integrate increasingly complex systems. In addition, NASA teams are applying new innovative techniques and tools to improve our SE effectiveness. The successful application of these principles, tools, and techniques requires not only technical expertise in SE, but also a logical and artful implementation to meet the unique needs of the Agency. This award recognizes and showcases examples of SE throughout NASA.
Distinguished team(s) or individuals across the Agency were evaluated on their demonstration of verifiable contributions utilizing recognized best practices, and advancing the art and science of SE. Many highly qualified projects and efforts were nominated by their Centers, and all should be recognized for their exemplary performance. Congratulations to those selected for this year’s award:
SE Systems Engineering Excellence Category
Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Systems Engineering (SE) Team
Lead Center: JPL
The Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, is a technology demonstration to test powered, controlled flight on another world for the first time. It hitched a ride to Mars on the Perseverance rover. Once the rover reached a suitable “airfield” location, it released Ingenuity to the surface so it could perform a series of test flights over a 30-Martian-day experimental window.
The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Systems Engineering (SE) Team exemplified the best of NASA’s systems engineering principles to deliver a first-of-a-kind aircraft for controlled flight on another planet. The development of Ingenuity was originally considered infeasible; due to the thin Martian atmosphere and expected rocky terrain that led to tight requirements. These challenges combined with a rover design that was never intended for the deployment and operation of an autonomous aircraft resulted in persistent beliefs that the project was unrealistic or that it would endanger the primary mission. To meet this challenge, the Ingenuity SE team created an organizational and functional process that promoted the tenets of outstanding systems engineering, with an emphasis on “integration”. The innovative systems engineering approach used on Ingenuity enabled its successful delivery and operation.
Read more: Mars Helicopter – NASA Mars
Lucy Solar Array Anomaly Response Team (SA ART)
Lead Center: GSFC
The Lucy Solar Array Anomaly Response Team (SA ART) led by Systems Engineering (SE) was formed to understand and address a deployment anomaly on the Lucy Spacecraft. Shortly after launch of the Lucy Spacecraft on Oct 16, 2021, an issue surfaced that one of the two huge “UltraFlex” Solar Arrays which are designed to deploy in a circular unfurling, like a Chinese fan, had not fully deployed and latched into place as designed. The Anomaly Response Team was comprised of SE leadership from NASA-GSFC, Lockheed Martin (spacecraft developer) and Northrop Grumman (Solar Array manufacturer) as well as engineering support from outside the project as well as the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC). The diverse center and industry partner team successfully applied rigorous and thorough Systems Engineering principles to ensure that every aspect of the anomaly was examined and all options for resolution were considered. Throughout the Anomaly Response Team process, the SE team led the larger multidisciplinary team in a textbook manner, working “badgelessly” across organizations and ensuring that every perspective was heard and thoroughly considered. Due to actions taken by the Anomaly Response Team, the Lucy Spacecraft is now able to meet all mission objectives with acceptable residual risk
Read more: NASA Troubleshoots Asteroid-Bound Lucy Across Millions of Miles | NASA
Advancement of Systems Engineering Category
Power and Propulsion Element Systems Engineering Modeling Team
Lead Center: GRC
The Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) Project has made significant progress in the application of model-based systems engineering (MBSE) methods, especially in the incorporation of approaches to perform configuration management (CM) of the model itself, rather than the artifacts produced from the model. Systems engineers worldwide have been working to implement MBSE environments, tools, and methodologies. Although advances in MBSE have occurred, a gap has emerged between the traditional CM processes for documents and those needed in a MBSE environment. The PPE team not only developed and implemented a MBSE model construct that allows the model to contain and maintain baseline data along with working content, but also developed and implemented a process that meets configuration management tenets, including protecting sensitive and proprietary information, baselining content, processing change requests, and providing configuration status accounting. The PPE Systems Engineering Modeling Team efforts are a great example of digital transformation and have made significant progress in the incorporation of CM of digital systems models.
2016-2017 Honorees
The Office of the Chief Engineer (OCE) is pleased to announce the selections for the 2016-2017 Systems Engineering Technical Excellence Award. Systems Engineering (SE) is a core competency of NASA’s highly skilled workforce and has been recognized as one of the secrets of the Agency’s success in the Apollo program and many other Programs and Projects since then. NASA teams and organizations are increasingly employing well-defined, proven processes and practices to develop, manage, and integrate increasingly complex systems. The successful application of these principles is a challenge that requires not only knowledge of SE but also artful implementation that may apply SE in new ways to meet the unique needs of the Agency.
Projects across the Agency were evaluated on their demonstration of verifiable contributions utilizing recognized best practices in the art and science of Systems Engineering, SE leadership qualities and innovative techniques, stakeholder satisfaction, and system complexity. Many highly qualified projects and efforts were nominated by their Centers and all should be recognized for their exemplary performance. Congratulations to those selected for this year’s award:
Program/Project (Large) Category
OSIRIS-REx Systems Engineering Team
Lead Center: GSFC
OSIRIS-REx, a billion-dollar New Frontiers mission, seeks answers to the questions that are central to the human experience: Where did we come from? What is our destiny? Asteroids, the leftover debris from the solar system formation process, can answer these questions and teach us about the history of the sun and planets.
The technical team that led this complex mission was enormous, and the individual efforts of each team member needed to be coordinated in order to ensure each piece worked with the others, the system accomplished the mission objectives, and the entire effort remained within the allocated resources. The Project Systems Engineering (SE) Team provided the leadership and technical guidance to ensure the technical team’s success. From the initial Design Reference Mission (DRM) and architecture development through the final pre-launch verifications and validations, the Project SE Team established a solid technical baseline for the mission.
Read more: OSIRIS-REx
Program/Project (Small) Category
HCFC-225 Solvent Replacement Team
Lead Center: SSC
In 2012 through 2014, in a joint project funded by the NASA Rocket Propulsion Test (RPT) Program, test laboratories at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), Stennis Space Center (SSC), and Johnson Space Center – White Sands Test Facility (JSC-WSTF) collaborated to seek out, test, and qualify a replacement for HCFC-225 as an effective cleaner safe for personnel and for use with oxygen systems and associated propulsion test facilities. The integration of Needs, Goals, and Objectives (NGO’s) and associated technical requirements from multiple centers is often complicated. Differences in center-level linguistics alone can lead to misunderstandings, miscommunications, and the appearance of conflicting ideas. Diversity of systems of interest, technical configurations, local standards, and processes add to the complexity of coalescing all stakeholder expectations into a solid set of NGO’s and requirements. The HCFC-225 Solvent Replacement Team diligently utilized a systems engineering approach to understand the risk at hand, determine and vet various concepts and options, and design and implement a solid approach for determining a safe solution to ensure mission success. Through the solid application of systems engineering practices, the team successfully accomplished its goal to identify a single replacement solvent that meets or exceeds the performance of HCFC-225 in all NASA rocket propulsion oxygen system applications.
Read more: HCFC-225 Solvent Replacement Project
Techniques & Methodologies Category
RP15 “Mission in a Year” Systems Engineering Team
Lead Center: ARC
The Resource Prospector (RP) mission, directed out of the Advanced Exploration Systems Directorate in HEOMD, will start to characterize the In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) potential of the lunar poles by mapping water and other volatile concentrations, as well as demonstrating ISRU techniques to extract water from lunar regolith. The mission is a multi-center effort with substantial involvement from ARC, JSC, MSFC and KSC.
During Phase A of the project, the RP project manager challenged the systems engineering team to mature the hardware and software concepts by carrying out an end-to-end “mission in a year” exercise. This type of exercise represents a new way of maturing space flight mission concepts with added benefits related to team building and training, as well as reducing risk during flight development phases. Tailored to each specific mission, undertaking this activity on mission concepts prior to Phase B, either in pre-Phase A or Phase A, would achieve the greatest benefit. The systems engineering “agile development” methods and innovations were the main enablers for maximizing value to the project and were keys to its success.
Read more: Resource Prospector
SAGE III on ISS Requirements and Verification Management
Lead Center: LaRC
Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III-ISS (SAGE III-ISS) is a key part of NASA’s mission to provide crucial, long-term measurements of that will help humans understand and care for Earth’s atmosphere. SAGE III measures Earth’s sunscreen, or ozone, along with other gases and aerosols, or tiny particles in the atmosphere. SAGE makes its measurements by locking onto the sun or moon and scanning the limb, or thin profile of the atmosphere from the unique vantage point of the International Space Station (ISS) which helps maximize the scientific value of SAGE III observations.
Requirements and verification management for complex systems is a critical task. Tracking and controlling large amounts of data assigned to many different people on large teams requires well defined processes and data management. In order to manage the requirements and verifications along with complex internal and external interfaces, the team defined the processes, database structure, and wrote scripts to execute the processes and generate metrics. These methods were applied to and demonstrated on SAGE III on ISS and are now being implemented on several other projects.
Read more: SAGE III on ISS
Innovation in Training Category
Systems Engineering “Down & Dirty” Training Series
Lead Center: MSFC
One of the most important jobs of the first line manager is to be a coach/mentor of the discipline in which they reside and at the same time ensure appropriate skill development of the individuals they manage. In 2010, the MSFC Systems Engineering Branch’s Leadership Team (i.e. Branch Chief, Branch Technical Assistant, Branch Team Leads) began an in-house initiative to collectively identify and capture the working experience and knowledge of the Leadership Team when it came to “how to” implement the systems engineering (SE) processes. The vision was to create a series of classes that really “dug down” and gathered the detail information for presentation that also included classroom exercises to help individuals actually work through and get their hands “dirty” on implementing. Thus, the name for our training series was identified as “Systems Engineering ‘Down & Dirty’.”
The Systems Engineering “Down & Dirty” Series of training fills a void that existed within the formal training curriculum at MSFC. The training captures many years of historical best practices and lessons learned from the many different successful programs/projects/activities developed at MSFC and is taught by the individuals who actually implemented the practices and lived the lessons.
2015 Honorees
The Office of the Chief Engineer (OCE) is pleased to announce the selections for the 2015 Systems Engineering Technical Excellence Award. Systems Engineering (SE) is a core competency of NASA’s highly skilled workforce and has been recognized as one of the secrets of the Agency’s success in the Apollo program and many other Programs and Projects since then. NASA teams and organizations are increasingly employing well-defined, proven processes and practices to develop, manage, and integrate increasingly complex systems. The successful application of these principles is a challenge that requires not only knowledge of SE but also artful implementation that may apply SE in new ways to meet the unique needs of the Agency.
Projects across the Agency were evaluated on their demonstration of verifiable contributions utilizing recognized best practices in the art and science of Systems Engineering, SE leadership qualities and innovative techniques, stakeholder satisfaction, and system complexity. Many highly qualified projects and efforts were nominated by their Centers and all should be recognized for their exemplary performance. Congratulations to those selected for this year’s award:
Program/Project Category
Entry, Descent, and Landing Systems Engineering for the Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity)
Lead Center: JPL
The achievement of the successful touchdown at Mars’ Gale Crater on August 5, 2012 could not have possible without many years of dedicated work from the systems engineers comprising the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) systems engineering team. This was a special team focused solely on the complex problem of EDL. It’s responsibilities spanned all phases of the project life cycle, from technology development and system architecting through detailed design, integration, and operations that culminated in a safe landing on Mars.
Read more: Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover Entry, Descent, and Landing
TIRS Systems Engineering
Lead Center: GSFC
The Landsat Data Continuity Mission’s (LDCM) Thermal InfraRed Sensor (TIRS) instrument systems engineering team exemplified the core competencies incumbent in the SE Technical Excellence Award. Their use of risk-informed decision making, tailoring, customization, and agility enabled them to conceptualize and deliver the instrument in only three years. Despite a tight schedule, and earthquake, a hurricane and a near Government shutdown, TIRS was delivered one week early and on budget.
Read more: Landsat 8: TIRS
3D Print Project
Lead Center: MSFC
The 3D Printing In Zero-G technology demonstration project is a proof-of-concept designed to assess the properties of melt deposition additive manufacturing in the microgravity environment experience on the International Space Station (ISS). The Printer was integrated into the Micro Gravity Science Glovebox (MSG) on ISS from which all integration requirements were derived. Over twenty parts were printed including a complex multi-price part in one print. Parts produced on-orbit were demonstrated to have equal quality compared to those produced on the ground.
Spacecraft Fire Safety (SFS) Demonstration
Lead Center: GRC
The purpose of the Spacecraft Fire Safety Demonstration project is to conduct a large-scale low gravity fire safety experiment on International Space Station (ISS) resupply vehicles after they depart the ISS. Knowledge obtained from these experiments will be used in detailed analysis and optimization for future spacecraft fire protection systems. The SFS Demonstration project systems engineering team used best practices, creative thinking and organizational, leadership and communication skills to plan and implement a systems engineering approach that allowed the project to meet its ambitious challenges. Team innovations fell in to three categories: Defining new interfaces with ISS and Orbital ATK; Extensive use of a common system architecture and parts; and Extensive tailoring and customization of systems engineering processes.
Techniques/Methodologies Category
MSFC Program Management and Systems Engineering Customization Tool
Lead Center: MSFC
As part of our goal to ensure effective Program/Project Management (PM) and Systems Engineering (SE) at MSFC, a unique customization tool has been developed and deployed that integrates all of MSFC’s program/project and systems engineering expectations into a single, interactive source that enables our Chief Engineers, Lead Systems Engineers, and Project Managers to plan, compare, contrast, evaluate, and communicate their implementation approaches regardless of project size, type (spaceflight or technology development), or risk tolerance.
This tool provides the ability for every program and project at MSFC to quickly define their unique characteristics, evaluate both PM and SE requirements, see opportunities for customizations, capture their approach, complete their compliance assessment and communicate it to our Center level governance authorities in a consistent manner. The tool supports “leaning forward” to make the tough, risk–related tailoring decisions often faced by our projects. Several MSFC programs/projects have successfully used the tool, including Planetary Missions Program Office (i.e. Discovery/New Frontiers), Space Launch System Program, Near Earth Asteroid Scout, and other small projects.
Download the Customization Tool here: https://explornet.nasa.gov/docs/DOC-38948 (Internal Website)
MBSE Assessments for Human Spaceflight Missions
Lead Center: JPL/JSC
The team successfully applied Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) methodologies in support of two significant activities: Orion Exploration Flight Test – 1 (EFT-1) certification of flight readiness, and the NASA Safety & Engineering Center (NESC) cross program interface assessment. Over the past four years the team members have applied and matured the methodology and approach as part of their human spaceflight missions and implemented a rigorous and repeatable technical methodology to effectively quantify and manage systems integration activities. The team adapted and extended the MBSE approach by developing analysis scripts and state-of-the-art automated graphical representations.
2014 Honorees
The Office of the Chief Engineer (OCE) is pleased to announce the selections for the 2014 Systems Engineering Technical Excellence Award. Systems Engineering (SE) is a core competency of NASA’s highly skilled workforce and has been recognized as one of the secrets of the Agency’s success in the Apollo program and many other Programs and Projects since then. NASA teams and organizations are increasingly employing well-defined, proven processes and practices to develop, manage, and integrate increasingly complex systems. The successful application of these principles is a challenge that requires not only knowledge of SE but also artful implementation that may apply SE in new ways to meet the unique needs of the Agency.
Projects across the Agency were evaluated on their demonstration of verifiable contributions utilizing recognized best practices in the art and science of Systems Engineering, SE leadership qualities and innovative techniques, stakeholder satisfaction, and system complexity. Congratulations to those selected for the award:
AES Morpheus Project
Lead Center: JSC
Developed and matured LOx/Methane lander technology that could support robotic or human missions to any surface, and a precision landing and hazard avoidance capability. “Low cost”, rapid prototyping SE approach includes: Rapid, iterative fast-tracked requirements development; Higher risk acceptance to test hardware (“fail forward”); Achieved 60 flight tests over a span of 37 months. The management team’s technical engagement enabled them to limit the amount of standing meetings and formal documentation.
Read more: Project Morpheus
LADEE Systems Engineering Team
Lead Center: ARC
NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) was a robotic mission that orbited the moon to gather detailed information about the structure and composition of the thin lunar atmosphere, and determine whether dust is lofted into the lunar sky. A thorough understanding of these characteristics of our nearest celestial neighbor will help researchers understand other bodies in the solar system, such as large asteroids, Mercury, and the moons of outer planets. The LADEE spacecraft’s modular common spacecraft bus, or body, innovated away from custom designs and transitioned toward multi-use designs and assembly-line production, which could drastically reduce the cost of spacecraft development, just as the Ford Model T did for automobiles. NASA’s Ames Research Center designed, developed, built, and tested the spacecraft and managed mission operations. LADEE measured Lunar dust at higher than expected altitudes and detected new elements in the Lunar exosphere near its pristine state, prior to future significant human activity. LADEE also tested an optical communications payload from the Moon, which is an important technology enabling high-bandwidth communications links for future planetary missions.
Read more: Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE)
LaRC Project Management and Systems Engineering Tailoring Tool Team
Lead Center: LaRC
Developed an application that allows for applicable tailoring of Project Management and Systems Engineering NASA Procedural Requirements (7120.5, 7120.8 & 7123.1), with particular emphasis on smaller projects. Although originally developed for LaRC use, it has been broadened and revised for Agency-wide application and has been distributed and utilized by several Centers.
GRC Collaborative Modeling for Parametric Assessment of Space Systems (COMPASS Team)
Lead Center: GRC
Concurrent engineering group who’s primary purpose is to perform integrated systems engineering, integration and analysis for in-space robotic science and human missions. Efficient, integrated design capability to rapidly assess design concepts with a consistent set of systems engineering processes and tools Unique is the team’s ability to securely transfer real-time data in an organized fashion between multiple engineers at different locations. Expanded to add in risk assessment, reliability and cost.
