January is often a time when business owners set their mission, make plans for the year ahead and focus on the organisations vision. Well, January is half way through and today I was fortunate enough to be in Canberra and visit the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex which is run by NASA and the CSIRO. Not only was the giant satellite awe inspiring in and of itself, but the centre is full of historic articles, videos and pictures documenting astonishing feats of technology over the past 50 or so years. I’m a bit of a techie (in case you hadn’t gathered) so when I think of how far we’ve come from developing rockets to putting a rover on Mars it truly does show the value of setting a mission!
One thing caught my eye – it was the objectives for Project Mercury. A team of individuals were formed in 1958 with the following ‘mission’.
To orbit a manned space craft around earth;
To investigate mans ability to function in space;
To recover both astronaut and spacecraft safely
That’s not just a stretch goal – to many that was mission impossible!
But yet, the project was successful. In 1961 (just 3 years later) the US launched Alan Shepard into space for a total of 15 minutes. Not long after, more goals were set, more missions were established and many have shaped our lives (who knew that NASA invented CDs and sunglasses?).
Given the enormity of such an undertaking, during a time when much of this technology was yet to be developed it demonstrates just how capable our organisations can be when we clearly articulate a mission.
Unless you’re in the deep space business your mission probably differs from this one (and if you are in the deep space business I’d still love to hear from you)- tell me, is your 2012 mission a big stretch, a small goal or nothing at all?
If you have one, or you’re even thinking about one then it would be great to hear from you – what is your 2012 mission?
