14 DAY TRIAL // NASA is going through a major change these days. After the appointment of Michael Griffin as Administrator, things are really starting to heat up. He has great plans for the agency, including the preparations for the next manned mission to Moon and, perhaps, Mars.
But the first step is to get space-borne, and that is why NASA chose today Lockheed Martin Corp., a team of Northrop Grumman Corp., and The Boeing Co. to compete for the contract to build a new generation of spaceships to replace the shuttles. These vehicles, called Crew Exploration Vehicles, are supposed to carry as many as 6 astronauts, and they will be used to fly to the International Space Station, the moon and someday perhaps Mars.
When asked about the moon issue, Griffin said that "I don't have a specific date, but sometime between 2015, which is the earliest we think we can do it, and 2020, which would be the latest. We have enough money to put people back on the moon in that time frame. The model I have is that we should build a lunar outpost, similar to the kinds of multinational outposts we have in Antarctica."
But with a new leader, and new objectives, generally comes a new team. So it seems that a lot of the former key people in NASA are packing their bags and preparing to leave. Amongst them, the most important figures are Craig Steidle, the associate administrator for exploration, to be replaced by Doug Cooke, a longtime Johnson Space Center engineer, Bill Readdy, NASA's associate administrator for spaceflight and Al Diaz, NASA's associate administrator for space science.
All we can hope now is that these changes will prove to be beneficial for the advancement of space exploration, and will accelerate the process of creating the space vehicle of the future, which will "boldly go where no man has gone before".