But Will They Have A Program To Manage?

Just days after Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) said NASA administrator Charles Bolden was skirting the law  to effectively kill the Constellation program, the agency has appointed two new managers to oversee the effort.

Lawrence D. Thomas has been appointed manager of NASA's Constellation Program, which manages the effort to take humans beyond low-Earth orbit and develop the next generation launch vehicle and spacecraft. Charles M. Stegemoeller has been appointed as deputy program manager. He and Thomas will be based at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Thomas most recently served as the deputy program manager of the Constellation program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL. He began his NASA career in 1983 as an aerospace systems engineer at Marshall's Science and Engineering Directorate.

He served in leadership positions at Marshall including manager of the Systems Engineering and Analysis Office for the Second Generation Reusable Launch Vehicle Program Office, and chief of the Systems Engineering Division, Spacecraft and Vehicle Systems Department. Thomas also spent two years at Johnson as manager of the Vehicle Analysis and Integration Office in the International Space Station Program.

Orion Crew Vehicle Artist's Concept

He earned a bachelor's degree in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Alabama in Huntsville; master's degree in industrial engineering from North Carolina State University; and doctorate in systems engineering also from Alabama.

Stegemoeller most recently served as director of the program planning and control office for the Constellation Program. He joined NASA in 1985 and served in several leadership positions within the Space Station Freedom and NASA/Mir Programs at Johnson. He was later named associate director for the Office of Bioastronautics within the Space Life Sciences Directorate. Stegemoeller earned his bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from Texas A&M University, College Station.

NASA Image Ares I-X Launch

The previous program manager had been reassigned, prompting Hutchison to call for an investigation in the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee, of which she is the ranking Republican. In an e-mail dated May 21st, Bolden told then-program manager Jeffery Hanley to place "the lowest priority on hardware that can solely be used for the Program of Record." President Obama has called for the Constellation program to be largely scrapped, leaving commercial companies to take the lead in developing the next generation of launch and human spaceflight vehicles.

FMI: www.nasa.gov