In 2002, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted a comparative analysis of the space operations training programs used by the United States Air Force (USAF) Space Command with those used by the NASA's Payload Operations and Integration Center (POIC) at Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama. The concentration of the study focused on improvements in payload operations ground controller training for the International Space Station Payload Program.

This report looked at the respective programs and investigated potential improvements for NASA's POIC ground controller training program in areas as diverse as staffing issues to database software capabilities. The report provided recommendations to NASA's POIC management, based on the findings, in such areas as separation of office and console operator staffing, centralizing the POIC training staff, developing a web-based tracking database, and implementing recurring training and evaluation into NASA's POIC training.

This paper will provide a brief review of the analysis and then present the benchmarking recommendations made by the Marshall Space Flight Center Training Organization. It will discuss the reasons for each recommendation and the implementation scheme that will be followed for each approved one. It will further focus on the cooperation between the two governmental agencies and the challenges to making the cooperative efforts successful.