NGST Project Weekly News Update 3 Apr 2002

The work with our Independent Review Team is coming to a close, at
least until the next major program review. In the process, we have
received some sage advice on several important issues, most notably
on software development, schedule reserve, ground system development
and the like. Our Mission Definition Review team, the more
technically-focused of the two review teams that met with us back
concurrently in December, recommended to Center Management that we be
given a green light to transition into the next phase.

The instrument AO process is now in full swing and proceeding on
schedule, thanks to Eric Smith and company from Headquarters and his
Langley support team. The Phase 2 proposal evaluations are
essentially done now, and the procurement team is preparing to
communicate with the offerors directly about some things they need to
do to allow us to complete the selection task. We are getting closer,
but sometimes I admit, the wait seems interminable. I am thankful for
such a dedicated, hard-working evaluation team, especially as the
weeks and months go by — and I might add, for patience on the part
of our offerors, as the wait is torturous. Regarding another
procurement action, the Institute and Goddard folks have been quite
productive in the whole area of the contract development for the
science and mission operations segment too. Now, believe it or not,
it’s time to form up new procurement development teams, or PDTs, for
some aspects of the instrument module. Momentum is slowly building
and things are moving ahead quite briskly now, it seems, in several
areas.

We participated in a major interim assessment meeting last month on
the Advanced Mirror Systems Demonstrator Program (AMSD), chaired by
the NGST Program Manager, Kevin Russell. This meeting was jointly
sponsored by our DoD partners. Each of the 3 optics houses presented
to the government team for 4 hours apiece at the University of
Maryland Conference Center. I attended most of the 1 1/2-day meeting,
which was then followed by a government-only technical evaluation
session, followed in turn by a meeting of the AMSD Executive Council.
I was quite impressed with the progress made on each of the three
technologies, but I was particularly struck by the degree of risk
management and the mitigation plans presented by each firm. My
complements to them and to Kevin Russell and his NASA/DoD team for
instilling in them this discipline, for it will pay big dividends
downstream in terms of forecasting and mitigating those systems-level
concerns that I talked about last time. Very nicely done! Now comes
the big push to ready the mirrors for ambient and cryotesting towards
the end of this year.

I’d like to close with a note of thanks to Lisa Guerra, our NGST
Program Executive at NASA Headquarters for the last 18 months or so.
Lisa, as many of our readers know, has been with NGST off and on for
the last 4-5 years, and during her time with us she has made many
valuable contributions. She will be moving up and out to take a
senior position with Mary Kicza, the new Associate Administrator for
the Office of Biological and Physical Sciences in Headquarters, Code
U. We wish her well. She will be missed.

yours,

bernie

Bernard D. Seery

Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) Project Manager

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center