Hanley Kicked Upstairs in Shakeup of NASA’s Constellation Program

Ares I-X rolls out to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral.

NASA Constellation Program Manager Jeff Hanley was reassigned today (read: kicked upstairs in lieu of being fired) in a shakeup of the troubled human spaceflight effort that the Obama Administration wants to cancel.

Hanley is now Deputy Director for Strategic Plans at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Dale Thomas replaces him as interim project manager.

The move is widely seen as the dumping of a manager who was working against NASA Administrator Charles Bolden’s efforts to cancel most of the program. U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, who has been an outspoken in his opposition to the move, criticized the decision to remove Hanley.

“NASA leadership removed a capable program manager in its continuing efforts to suppress internal voices of dissent to their visionless space exploration plan,” Shelby said this afternoon. “This action furthers an atmosphere where NASA’s leadership team has become a key impediment to space exploration moving forward.”

Shelby has grown increasingly frustrated with what he and other lawmakers believe is an attempt by NASA brass to kill Constellation even though the law says they can’t without congressional approval. Calling NASA’s own leadership “a key impediment” to the nation’s space program is another sign of that frustration.

Hanley’s reassignment came on a day that Bolden testified before the House Committee on Science and Technology about the space agency’s plans to commercialize space transportation to Earth orbit. The hearing also included testimony from Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan as well as former Lockheed Martin CEO Thomas Young. All three men have been critical of the Administration’s proposal.