A yearlong journey of cultural {and professional} growth abroad has a NASA Deep Area Logistics worker enthusiastic about present and future collaboration with one in all America’s key worldwide companions within the company’s Artemis program.
Katherine Cook dinner, who develops cargo supply companies for NASA’s Gateway, not too long ago returned to the company’s Kennedy Area Heart in Florida after an immersive expertise in Japan. There, she collaborated with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Company), authorities ministries contributing to Japan’s area actions, and The Nationwide Weight loss plan’s Home of Representatives.
“The whole lot I did concerned Artemis and human exploration,” Cook dinner mentioned. “Growing applied sciences for Moon to Mars is difficult, but when we will discover a good stability of leveraging the strengths of every companion and proceed to evolve the partnership, we’ll have the ability to share information in an much more built-in manner.”
As a part of her journey, Cook dinner spent about 5 months on the Tsukuba Area Heart, roughly one hour north of Tokyo, working beneath JAXA Vice President and Director Common for Human Spaceflight Know-how Hiroshi Sasaki. She partnered with JAXA subject material consultants to host themed discussions for the directorate crew, sharing and discussing concepts concerning the U.S and Japanese approaches, together with future partnering alternatives.
Her analysis themes included: NASA’s Moon to Mars aims; business capabilities similar to business low Earth orbit growth; lunar floor transportation similar to rovers and utility autos; lunar in-situ useful resource utilization, human touchdown programs, and science priorities to allow human exploration to the Moon and past. This required intense language coaching – earlier than and all through Cook dinner’s journey – so she may perceive, write, and converse Japanese with an viewers starting from college students and coworkers to Japanese dignitaries, such because the Minister of Overseas Affairs Yoshimasa Hayashi and JAXA President Dr. Hiroshi Yamakawa.
“I believe loads of progress got here out of difficult myself – each in studying extra about NASA and U.S. businesses collaborating on area and studying about it deeply sufficient to clarify it and talk it in a succinct manner that might make it by translation,” Cook dinner mentioned.
Cook dinner was simply the third NASA individual chosen within the practically 30-year historical past of the Mansfield Fellowship, a program named for former U.S. Senate Majority Chief and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield.
Invited to lecture at a number of college graduate applications, Cook dinner was impressed by college students’ curiosity in NASA’s Moon to Mars plans, in addition to their information and in-depth questions. Her interplay with Japanese colleagues was equally constructive, as they welcomed her to their group with open arms.
Through the Artemis I launch in November 2022, Cook dinner invited members of the JAXA human spaceflight crew to a launch viewing celebration. Conscious that she was upset about lacking the launch stay, they blew her away by exhibiting up in nice numbers, doling out high-fives and ecstatically cheering on the launch in entrance of a giant display screen TV on the Tsukuba Area Heart.
“One factor that leaves an impression on you from Japan is their hospitality. The phrase for it’s ‘omotenashi,’” Cook dinner mentioned. “It’s greater than only a phrase; it’s culturally ingrained in how they work together with one another and the extent of consideration that they put into every thing they do.”
Enriched technically, culturally, and spiritually from her transformative expertise in Japan, Cook dinner returned to NASA “perpetually modified.” She realized an ideal deal about science, life, and her personal company. She even picked up a saying that she integrated into her each day work routine.
“In Japan, on the finish of on daily basis, you say, ‘Otsukaresama deshita,’ which suggests, ‘Thanks in your exhausting work.’ Once you go a coworker within the corridor and once you toast in celebration with coworkers, you say ‘Otsukaresama des,’ ” Cook dinner mentioned. “Even nonetheless, after I meet with my Japanese counterparts, I’ll typically say it. And it jogs my memory to hold that appreciation of my crew all through my day again at NASA. The easy phrase bonds us all collectively throughout the worldwide Artemis work we do.”
