"NASA’s deputy administrator is leaving agency" by Kenneth Chang | New York Times, August 08, 2013
NEW YORK — As lawmakers in Washington continue to wrangle over NASA’s financing and expeditions, a top administrator at the agency who played a large role in drafting the Obama administration’s controversial space policies is bowing out.
Lori B. Garver, NASA’s deputy administrator for the past four years, will leave next month to take the top staff position at the Air Line Pilots Association, a union representing 50,000 pilots in the United States and Canada.
“It’s time to take on new challenges,” Garver said in an interview Tuesday. “I feel like I’ve accomplished so many of the objectives I set out to do here.”
Garver, 52, who works at NASA headquarters in Washington, was often the public face — and lightning rod for criticism — of the Obama administration’s efforts to push NASA in new directions. The White House wanted to cancel the program started under President George W. Bush to send astronauts back to the moon, and scale back the agency’s role in designing rockets and spacecraft.
Garver, who previously worked both inside and outside of NASA, served as an adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. She switched to Obama’s team after he won the nomination and following the election played a key role on the transition team for shaping NASA policy.
In July 2009, the Senate confirmed Garver’s appointment as NASA deputy administrator.
Garver advocated for a greater role for “New Space” — the involvement of entrepreneurial companies, which many space advocates believe are more nimble and efficient than aerospace titans like Boeing and Lockheed Martin that NASA has relied on.
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"NASA officials give up on fixing Kepler telescope" by Carolyn Y. Johnson | Globe Staff, August 15, 2013
After months of trying to fix the Kepler space telescope’s positioning mechanism, NASA officials are giving up, meaning the mission’s planet-hunting days are most likely over.
NASA scientists are holding out hope that some other scientific use can be made of the spacecraft, calling on the scientific community to send ideas about how it can be repurposed. But the telescope will be best known for the way it has profoundly altered our sense of place in the universe. Kepler found 135 confirmed planets circling other stars, and several thousand planet candidates, including the first Earth-sized worlds found outside our solar system.
Kepler switched into “safe mode” in May, after a gyroscope used to aim the telescope broke. At the time, its hunt for habitable worlds was inching nearer and nearer to the sweet spot where the planets were neither too cold or too hot, too big or too small, to be home to life.
“At the beginning of our mission, no one knew if Earth-size planets were abundant in the galaxy. If they were rare, we might be alone,” William Borucki, Kepler science principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center, said in a statement. “The data holds the answer to the question that inspired the mission: Are Earths in the habitable zone of stars like our Sun common or rare?”
NASA left open the possibility that the spacecraft’s scientific life could be extended, including the possibility of future planet-hunting with a new strategy.
Even if those efforts are unsuccessful, researchers who worked on the mission aren’t mourning....
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Related:
NASA preparing to launch 3-D printer into space
NASA troubleshoots craft bound for Jupiter after Earth flyby
Looks like privatization isn't working out that well, either.
UPDATE:
"NASA’s newest delivery service made its first-ever shipment to the International Space Station on Sunday, another triumph for a booming commercial space arena.... a week late in coming."
Also see: Plane lands on Chicago’s lakefront
