Houston Space Center to Retain Same Role Amid NASA Shake-Up
Posted on: Friday, 25 June 2004, 06:00 CDT
Jun. 25--Johnson Space Center will retain its traditional responsibility for shuttle and international space station operations despite organizational changes announced Thursday by NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe.
Streamlining the agency's Washington management is the first step in a process intended to prepare NASA to carry out President Bush's strategy for exploration of the moon and Mars.
NASA wants to consolidate its eight space agency enterprises into four divisions: space operations, exploration systems, science and aeronautics research, O'Keefe told NASA employees in a closed-circuit television broadcast from Washington.
Johnson, home to NASA's astronaut corps and Mission Control, fits into the new space operations division along with the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama and the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. All four facilities were allied in the spaceflight enterprise under the previous arrangement.
The new alignment was called for in a June 16 report prepared by the President's Commission to Moon, Mars and Beyond that concluded in part, "NASA's organizational structure is not wired for success."
The space initiative outlined by Bush on Jan. 14 would not succeed unless NASA became more flexible organizationally and delegated more responsibility to aerospace companies and academic researchers, the report said.
The most sweeping of the changes recommended by the commission would transfer supervision of NASA's 10 field facilities, including Johnson, to new federally funded research and development centers. The transfer would give the facilities more latitude in the recruiting and compensation of personnel and allow them to participate in a wider range of research activities.
On Thursday, O'Keefe said that phase of NASA's reorganization would unfold more slowly.
Proposed changes in field center supervision will likely require new legislation. That request could be part of the proposed 2006 federal budget submitted to Congress in February, O'Keefe said.
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