View of the station flight control room in Johnson Space Center’s Mission Control Center during rendezvous and docking operations between the Soyuz and TMA-3 spacecraft and the International Space Station. Texts including Jim Collins’ Good to Great and Built to Last and John Kotter’s Leading Change served as guideposts and led to tough questions such as, “What can we do to continue to raise the bar, but also acknowledge the budgetary environment?” As Jim Thornton, manager of MOD’s Management Integration Office stated, “Recognizing the environment and the programs’ need to constantly squeeze more juice out of the orange fuels the fire for improving, innovation, and efficiency and never being static.” No single event drove the transformation it evolved out of MOD’s culture of continuous improvement. With a 50 percent reduction in workforce and a tenfold increase in complexity over the course of twenty years, MOD leadership realized they had to proactively work to sustain a technically sound organization regardless of the external environment. By 2010/2011, MOD had the same budget but fewer than 2,500 employees to support shuttle, the continued construction and support of the space station, and the planning and development of procedures for the new Constellation program. In 1990, while supporting the Space Shuttle program, MOD’s budget was approximately $412 million and its head count approximately 5,000. The technical and leadership culture of MOD has survived because of the deliberate transformation the directorate has instigated in the face of increasingly complex mission objectives and static or diminishing budgets. MOD’s mission is to ensure the success of any NASA human spaceflight program, remain stewards of critical human spaceflight technical capabilities, and facilitate flight operations culture. MOD includes the infrastructure required for these activities: the Mission Control Center (MCC), IT architecture, and simulators and mock-ups, such as the ISS training facility, Space Vehicle Mock-Up Facility, and the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. MOD is responsible for the planning, training, and flight of NASA’s astronauts and human space vehicles. Photo Credit: NASA Johnson Space Center What Is MOD?

In this photo, a crew of technicians prepares two astronauts for their descent into the pool. The Neutral Buoyancy Lab is a vital training ground for spacewalking astronauts.

Research and development mod