ANNOUNCER: The dawn of Orion and
a new era in American space exploration.
DR. WANDA AUSTIN: In order to be technical leaders in space today we
need to be in continuous pursuit of
being better. We need to look for
opportunities to be better in every area.
That includes deep space exploration,
human spaceflight, building and
sustaining research capabilities in space,
like the ISS, space tourism and space
situational awareness. We need to
transform once remote possibilities into
tangible realities. That requires
substantial investment in research and
development, state-of-the-art facilities,
and cutting-edge projects that inspire
and attract the best and brightest minds
in engineering. So today in our business
when we celebrate a successful launch
and the assets reach their intended orbit,
that's not the end because the mission is
just beginning. With the space
community that also means operating at
the cutting edge of technology in harsh
environments with evolving threats. To do
this, our architectures, including our
integrated ground systems, need to be
resilient, robust, reliable and interoperable
while still meeting the constraints of
our ever tightening budgets. Failure is
also part of the process of innovation. We
have to take note of our failures and
document and understand why our ideas didn't
work. If we fear failure we will never
try anything new. Innovation happens when
we work together and utilize every
resource and strategy at our disposal
to develop the technical solutions that our
world demands.
From large private companies to student-led
smallsat missions we are seeing a tremendous
increase in the level of global
participation in space which is a great
opportunity with unique challenges. As
more countries and organizations
invest in space, we all reap the rewards of
technological progress. So the launch
business will continue to be dynamic and
the need for focused mission assurance will
continue to be a high priority because
it is still true that rocket science is hard.
