From NASA technician to 'satellite boss': How one man’s journey reached the stars.

Careers at a space agency are often pictured as astronauts and scientists, but satellite programs depend just as much on technicians, engineers and managers who build, test and oversee spacecraft. Earth and space science satellites go through many layers of organisation prior to launch, ranging from hands-on experience in a field centre up to program management at agency headquarters and contractor management at federally sponsored laboratories. A handful of individuals go through almost all of these layers during their careers. A

NASA official began in hardware at a field centre and eventually took on senior executive responsibility for satellite programs, after working at agency headquarters, in an overseas post and in a safety organisation.Marcus Watkins moves from Goddard aerospace technician to the Senior Executive ServiceNASA's profile of Watkins says he worked his way up from aerospace technician at the Goddard Space Flight Center to a Senior Executive overseeing NASA Earth and space science satellite programs. The same NASA profile states that he was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in 1999. The biography also says that he holds a bachelor's degree in Systems Engineering and a master's degree in Engineering Administration, both from George Washington University.

Headquarters posts from 1997 to 2003 NASA's profile names his headquarters positions, including Deputy Director of Flight Programs and Associate Director of the Sun-Earth Connection Division in the Office of Space Science, but gives no dates. The dates below come from a Goddard personnel notice reproduced by SpaceRef, which says he was Senior NASA Representative to Los Angeles Air Force Base from 1997 to 1999 and served as Deputy Director for Civil Space. Afterwards, he was Deputy Director of the Flight Programs Division from 1999 to 2001 and then Associate Director of the Sun-Earth Connection Division from 2001 to 2003. The NASA profile says he was responsible for defining and developing the Discovery, Explorer, New Millennium, Balloon and Sounding Rocket programs, which were assigned to Goddard, Ames Research Center, Marshall Space Flight Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.NASA's representative to Spain from 2003 to 2006From 2003 to 2006, Watkins served as NASA's Representative to Spain, responsible for all NASA issues in the country. The profile lists the Robledo Antenna Tracking Station, the Center for Astrobiology, the Transatlantic Abort Landing Sites and various education initiatives. He then directed the Office of Systems Safety and Mission Assurance at Goddard from 2006 to 2010.Director of the NASA Management Office at JPLNASA's profile of Marcus Watkins, last updated in July 2023, lists him as Director of the NASA Management Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The profile describes JPL as NASA's only federally funded research and development center dedicated to the robotic exploration of the solar system and says NASA contracted the California Institute of Technology to manage the laboratory under that office's oversight. JPL's own website likewise describes the laboratory as a federally funded research and development center managed for NASA by Caltech. The profile lists the Curiosity rover, the InSight Mars lander and the Juno orbiter at Jupiter among the missions JPL operates, although NASA ended InSight's mission in December 2022, before the profile's last update in July 2023.The profile credits him with improving collaboration among headquarters offices, NASA centers, other government agencies, the Caltech campus, JPL and international partners. He should not be confused with Michael Watkins, who became JPL director on July 1, 2016 and who NASA announced would step down after five years in the post.A Langley and Office of Space Science method for predicting small-mission successThe NASA technical paper Predicting Mission Success in Small Satellite Missions describes a process built by the Office of Space Science with NASA Langley Research Center. Its purpose is to predict the likely success of missions proposed to the Discovery and Explorer Programs. The assessment examines each proposal from technical, management and cost and schedule perspectives, which makes it a direct window into the program family Watkins directed at headquarters.National Research Council cost-growth figures for Discovery and Explorer missionsThe National Research Council report Principal-Investigator-Led Missions in the Space Sciences, published in 2006, compared cost growth in these programs with other recent NASA missions. The Discovery program performed better: its five successful missions to date, Lunar Prospector, Stardust, Genesis, MESSENGER and Deep Impact, had average life-cycle cost growth of 13.7%, against 18.3% for other recent core NASA missions and average development cost growth of 12.4% at the confirmation acceptance review. Additionally, the committee observed that the latest Discovery programs' cost overruns resulted from challenging technical objectives and added management following the failure of the Mars program in the late 1990s. The Explorer program fared worse: the five Explorer missions the committee examined, RHESSI, Swift, IMAGE, GALEX and WMAP, had average development cost growth of 30.8%, driven largely by Swift at 68.8% and GALEX at 52.8%, compared with 12.4% development cost growth for Discovery.What the two studies show about the portfolio Watkins directedWhile the NASA Langley referenced report focuses on planning the evaluations before any flights occur, the NRC report reviews cost growth after the fact. Between these two reports is presented an overview of the issues associated with the process of oversight, the evaluation of risk beforehand and performance review afterward.