Compass (NASA)

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Compass is a NASA engineering team at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. It was formed in 2006 to support the Lunar Surface Access Module design study. The team focuses on integrated vehicle systems analyses.

How they work: Compass takes design briefs from contractors, checks the design parameters, runs simulations, details the design, and writes a final report. By collaborating in real time among engineers and scientists with broad experience, they can develop designs quickly.

Compass aims high, often working on futuristic spacecraft concepts. One example mentioned is a nuclear-powered robot designed to burrow into Europa. Early successes have helped the team keep producing new preliminary designs.

The name Compass originally came from an acronym—Collaborative Modeling for the Parametric Assessment of Space Systems—which is no longer used. The team is similar to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Team X and the Goddard Space Flight Center’s Integrated Design Center Team. They also created their own tool, GLIDE, to support secure data transfers, which helps their work. Compass became the team’s name in 2006, following a multi-center Lunar Lander Concept Design study led by Johnson Space Center.