GP-B Post-Flight Analysis—Final Report - Gravity Probe B - Stanford ...

As described in Chapter 2, the flight mission lasted for 17.3 months, including a 4-month initialization and orbitcheckout (IOC) phase, a 50-week science (data collection) phase, and a 6-week post-science instrumentcalibration phase. During the flight mission months, Green organized the mission operations team withrotating Mission Directors and Flight Directors, so that the Mission Operations Center could be staffed 24hours a day, seven days a week. Every weekday, all-hands status meetings were held at 10:00 AM to brief theentire team on the status of the spacecraft and payload and to address any issues that may have arisen during theprevious day or weekend. A more detailed description of mission operations is included in Chapter 4, Section4.1.2 “Daily Operations Routine” . Green's management style was an excellent fit for the 17.3-month flightmission. He was able to achieve extraordinary performance from the GP-B mission operations team, which ledto the entire team being given a NASA Group Achievement Award, presented by Tony Lyons from MSFC, inNovember 2005, shortly after the mission concluded.6.6 Data Analysis Period (2005-2007)Throughout the flight mission, the GP-B team numbered approximately 150 people, a large percentage ofwhom were dedicated to mission operations activities. Naturally, as the flight mission began to wind down inAugust-September 2005, the focus of the GP-B began to shift from operating the spacecraft to analyzing theexperimental data that had been collected. Between August and November 2005, GP-B said farewell to all but ahandful of mission operations personnel. Some of the departing team members had worked on GP-B for tenyears or more, and thus the mood at farewell gatherings was a mixture of triumph and sadness.6.6.1 Final Management Transition at StanfordBy the end of November 2005, the GP-B team had shrunk to approximately 30 full-time scientists, engineers,mathematicians, with a small management team and associated support personnel. Gaylord Green, whosestrong expertise was managing flight programs, had limited experience and little interest in managing the dataanalysis team, and thus he began reducing his involvement in the program, as did Deputy Program Manager,Tom Langenstein. Realizing that GP-B had reached another management transition point, Francis Everittannounced in March 2006 the appointment of Bill Bencze to assume the role of GP-B Program Manager for theduration of the data analysis period. Bencze had demonstrated his leadership skills as manager of the GSSdevelopment team. His strong organizational skills, coupled with his broad knowledge of the program and hisability to communicate effectively with scientists, engineers, and management, made him an excellent choice tomanage the final phase of GP-B. In his announcement of Bencze's promotion to Program Manager, Everitt alsopraised Gaylord Green for his superb leadership during the flight mission years:This is the moment to record our tremendous admiration and respect to Gaylord for thebrilliant job he did in the four and a half years as Program Manager since November 2002.As we look back, we will all agree that those have been the most stirring years in the history ofGP-B. It is an immense tribute to Gaylord that we came through them so successfully. I amconfident that with Bill we will have corresponding success in the different, but no lessstirring, time leading to our final result.Bencze was one of the key architects of the GP-B three-phase data analysis plan, and thus he is intimatelyfamiliar with the process and the issues that the team is working through. His chief management challenge forthe remainder of the data analysis phase is to synthesize the various threads of the analysis process into acoherent picture, keep the team focused on the important issues, keep the analysis on track, and ensure that thefinal results will have the lowest margin of error possibly attainable within the time and budget constraints ofthe analysis phase.164 March 2007 Chapter 6 — The GP-B Management Experiment