New Project Constellation Managers Appointed

Representatives of the American space agency announce that two new top officials have been appointed in charge of Project Constellation. The initiative is NASA's long-duration plan of taking humans back to the Moon by 2020, in a host of new vehicles and rockets. After five years in development, and more than $9 billion spent for this purpose, US President Barack Obama proposed at the beginning of this year that it be canceled, and the task of taking people to low-Earth orbit (LEO) assigned to private companies. Some of those who opposed the measure were fired from NASA.

Such was the case with former top manager for Constellation, Heff Hanley, who is based at the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. He was reassigned to a lesser position in late May, and his deputy manager took office until now. NASA announced yesterday, June 14, that the new Constellation manager was Lawrence D. Thomas, who most recently served as the deputy program manager of the Constellation Program at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama. Charles M. Stegemoeller has been appointed as deputy manager. Both experts will conduct their activities from the JSC.

“Thomas most recently served as the deputy program manager of the Constellation Program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. 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,” NASA writes of its new selection in a press release.

“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,” the statement concludes.