NASA deputy administrator steps down

New York Times : Lori Garver, NASA’s deputy administrator since 2009, is leaving the post next month to take up the top staff position at the Air Line Pilots Association. While at NASA, Garver advocated soliciting rockets and spacecraft from private companies and concentrating more on fundamental space technologies. Garver’s space policies were often at odds with Congress, however. In direct opposition to the Obama administration’s 2011 budget proposal to cancel the Moon program and take a hiatus from human space exploration, Democrats and Republicans alike supported the building of the Space Launch System and Orion capsule. Nevertheless, her push for the private sector to provide transportation for astronauts to the International Space Station resulted in NASA financing projects by three commercial companies—Boeing, Space Exploration Technologies Corp, and Sierra Nevada Corp.