PI Daily, June 2020
By Lindy Elkins-Tanton Starting January 1, 2020…
a new series of daily mission activity Tweets from Psyche Principal Investigator (PI) Lindy Elkins-Tanton.
#PI_Daily
The goal? To share an inside look at the chores, challenges, tasks, assignments, duties, and more taken on by a NASA mission PI!
Follow along on @MissionToPsyche or below.
A funny day…
Many @MissionToPsyche emails abt meetings for final decisions abt this or that engineering detail (where "detail" is something we cannot move past til final decision made).
Plus a weird bit of PI-ness…checking bona fides on ppl asking unusual Qs.
— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) June 30, 2020
Sometimes work is pretty prosaic: Working on getting all our published papers into the correct federal database.
And sometimes urgent: Being Bad Cop with a slow vendor.
And sometimes poetic: Dreaming of what Psyche might look like, so @peter_rubin can make new art.
— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) June 25, 2020
Today is @missiontopsyche MMR (Monthly Management Review).
Two ex. issues:
– Subcontractor re-prioritizes your mission below another NASA mission, putting schedule in jeopardy, bc sub is having mfg challenges.
– Which high bay you can use determined by size of door. pic.twitter.com/RTb1CPuqNy— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) June 24, 2020
Working on launch trajectories.
Discussions w instrument teams abt possible effects of extreme solar events. Are they fully covered by schedule margin? What abt cosmogenic radionuclides produced by same?
And with that, for you all a cute rabbit eating mesquite. pic.twitter.com/KheinlCmLz
— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) June 23, 2020
Quiet day for me. Monitoring health stats at @NASAPsyche partners building hardware (so far so good!). About to deploy applications for next year's art interns (Psyche Inspired!). And thinking a lot about how to use space exploration to inspire better education.
— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) June 22, 2020
Oh, whistle while you work, the advice goes! 🤪
Feel like we're a hive of bees 🐝 Big effort building, rebudgeting/rescheduling, & making sure @NASAPsyche, @escapade_mars, & Janus mission spacecraft all launch together safely. Space is hard!https://t.co/jRDqI9fRhU
— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) June 17, 2020
#PI_Daily
Technical-Schedule-Risk board, where we assess how changes requested from the team would impact schedule and cost.ex: vendor charges $200K extra bc engineering design for new die is unexpectedly needed
BUT almost all the rest of the day spent on future of education!
— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) June 11, 2020
All-team @NASAPsyche Webex. Henry Stone, our super-fab PM, gives summary of Directorate Program Mgt Council informational review yesterday, the culmination of our yr-long Festive Critical Design Review Season.
Good to see all sectors & interns to leadership online. pic.twitter.com/6aaMWnnmfb
— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) June 10, 2020
Today: @NASAPsyche's post-CDR, informational Directorate Program Management Council meeting (DPMC). For three hours we will summarize where Psyche mission is on all fronts, and our forecasts.
Expecting clear communications and good advice and support.
Onward!
— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) June 9, 2020
Today, launch trajectory trade, risk board, systems engineering, and more, but I thought it more important to post a series of ideas about
program management, equity, inclusion, and team functioning.
A thread of ideas that might be helpful for PIs of mission teams:
— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) June 3, 2020
A letter I wrote to the @NASAPsyche team this morning.
—-
Dear Psyche team,I am thinking about you all and hope you are coping in some way with the very difficult circumstances of our world right now. I hope that you and yours are safe.
— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) June 3, 2020