NASA Creates Two New Mission Directorates for Human Spaceflight
WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced Tuesday the agency is creating two new mission directorates that will best position the agency for the next 20 years.
The move separates the agency’s current Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate into the new Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD) and Space Operations Mission Directorate.
NASA is making the changes because of increasing space operations in low-Earth orbit and development programs well underway for deep space exploration, including Artemis missions.
Leadership will discuss the change and the future of NASA during an employee town hall broadcast live on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website at noon EDT today.
Media are invited to a follow-on teleconference at 2:30 p.m., with audio streaming live online.
Both mission directorates are engineering the future of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach from different ends of the spaceflight continuum.
“NASA has long set the vision for space exploration, not only for our nation, but also for the world. This reorganization positions NASA and the United States for success as we venture farther out into the cosmos than ever before, all while supporting the continued commercialization of space and research on the International Space Station,” said Nelson. “This also will allow the United States to maintain its leadership in space for decades to come.”
Jim Free will return to the agency as associate administrator of ESDMD. The new directorate will define and manage systems development for programs critical to Artemis and plan the Moon to Mars exploration approach in an integrated manner.
“I’m excited to be back at NASA. Working hand-in-hand with our colleagues in Space Operations, we will focus on ensuring the success of Artemis missions in the near term while charting a clearly defined path for human exploration of Mars as our horizon goal,” said Free.
Kathy Lueders will serve as associate administrator of the agency’s new Space Operations Mission Directorate. This directorate will focus on launch and space operations, including the International Space Station, the commercialization of low-Earth orbit, and eventually, sustaining operations on and around the Moon.
“The space station is the cornerstone of our human spaceflight efforts, and the commercial crew and cargo systems that support the microgravity laboratory are the building blocks to our continued success,” said Lueders. “We’ll work closely across mission directorates to achieve even greater successes to come, including expanding the low-Earth orbit economy, launching our state-of-the-art science missions, and getting ready for future operations at the Moon and Mars.”
Creating two separate mission directorates will ensure these critical areas have focused oversight teams in place to support and execute for mission success. This approach with two areas focused on human spaceflight allows one mission directorate to operate in space while the other builds future space systems, so there is a constant cycle of development and operations to advance NASA’s goals in space exploration.
“Kathy has demonstrated exceptional leadership and overseen tremendous progress in her role as the associate administrator for human spaceflight. And we’re thrilled to welcome Jim back to the agency. Together, this dynamic duo will help forge the future of human exploration,” said Nelson.
Over the next few months, NASA will implement these new mission directorates while remaining focused on safety of ongoing operations for commercial crew and upcoming Artemis missions.
There are no changes to NASA center roles and missions as a part of this reorganization.
NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy and Associate Administrator Bob Cabana will join Nelson, Free, and Lueders during the town hall and media teleconference.
For more information on NASA and agency activities, visit:
42 responses to “NASA Creates Two New Mission Directorates for Human Spaceflight”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
This is Bill “Ballast” Nelson easing Kathy Lueders to the periphery, punishment for that HLS award.
Could be. It’s certainly no promotion for Lueders. We’ll have to see where this goes but I’ll confess the optics are terrible. I suspect it won’t be long before we have a decent idea of what is intended for, and by, this new Directorate. If it turns out to be an effort to salvage some future relevance for SLS-Orion, for example, then I will have to rescind the benefit of the doubt I gave Nelson upon his appointment.
If the idea is that pulling Lueders off of exploration will also sideline SpaceX, though, Nelson has badly miscalculated. If the covert purpose of the new Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate is to slow down both exploration and the systems development to support it, Mr. Free will soon be finding his Directorate ninja-ed at every turn by SpaceX.
I don’t see it that way at all, Emmet. Kathryn has been doing a fine job and I would suspect that she would have been given the choice of which directorate she would have wanted to head up. She, of course, has chosen the one that will have the longest term of relevance, i.e. the one that includes the (future) operations of SpaceX. Jim’s directorate is just going to “tread water” for a while and then, just like the morning dew, will evaporate and be gone. 🙂 Stay safe, Paul.
I wonder. She certainly ninja’d Nelson on picking SX for HLS just before he came on board. This looks like payback to me. At this point in time she’s smelling a whole lot better than old Ballast Bill. And the plot thickens.
its unclear to me Nelson knows what day it is without a card from an assistant
I like your, Paul, and I hope you are right. But I am deeply suspicious of Nelson and of the machinations of the usual suspects.
My first thought was the same — Leuders would have gotten her pick of which job she wanted. Otherwise, we might have seen (will see?) a resignation.
Reading a little further elsewhere, I read that “Free also served as the Orion spacecraft’s service module manager”, so he may be more of an OldSpace guy meant to “restore balance”, but who knows at this point.
Another thought is that Leuders concentrating on getting a commercial space station(s) going in LEO could actually be beneficial. It’s not like Commercial Crew was incredibly speedy under her, but at the least she is pretty clearly competent
Looking at the video gunsandrockets posted in his comment, Leuders certainly seems onboard with the change.
She may well envision shepherding in a humans-in-LEO economy as the potential crowning achievement of her professional life. It will be no small feat bringing to life multiple commercial space stations with diverse customer bases from next to nothing and finishing the work of there being multiple human launch providers with multiple customers beyond NASA. In many ways, such would be a more substantial achievement the recreating Apollo half a century later.
Or she may be privately seething 😀
But if so, she’s a good actor
Emmet you probably are correct but my take is more along the lines of the Paul and TRD
I think that the lunar program is going nowhere. fast anyway. they are going to work on the Gateway and maybe get that moving sometime around 26 or 28 but there isnt going to be a lunar landing before then…even if “all goes well”
its pretty clear that the main action is going to be trying to sort out a low earth orbit economy..something that at least or maybe actually is sustainable…
its dawned on me that the lunar effort is mostly earth based. Even Musk as he gets starship into space will mostly be doing it around earth until that time period…
Nelson is well an old used car salesman
Nelson: “Yes these deck chairs look nice here”
Funny 😀
we can watch the water rising…another brandy
Sounds like Ballast is trying to put Old Space back into the driver’s seat for Artemis.
Instead of dealing with someone they worked well with in Kathy Lueders for the HLS contract, now SpaceX will have to deal with Jim Free, who sounds like someone Boeing and Lockheed handpicked and ordered Ballast to put in charge of Artemis.
I predict Jim Free will be putting up all sorts of roadblocks to hinder SpaceX’s progress for HLS Starship while steering more cost-plus contracts to Boeing and Lockheed. This is going to get ugly.
If that’s what happens, it will have to start fairly soon. It’s not like such an effort can be kept safely out of sight.
I suspect that it’s already happening. The urgency of the Bridenstine Artemis program seems to be evaporating before our eyes. And I wonder how much of a defense NASA/DOJ will put up in court of the SX HLS award.
I had hope for Nelson when he surprisingly came out full force in favor of Project Artemis and the 2024 lunar landing goal.
But now the other shoe has finally dropped.
Have you watched this event yet? The Nelson prologue frames the NASA organizational changes into horrifying clarity…
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
This divides NASA human spaceflight into clear LEO vs beyond-LEO areas-of-operation. You can forget any cross fertilization or exploitation of systems which have potential to cross the boundaries of those areas of operation. There will never be an Orion LEO taxi. There will never be a Dragon lunar taxi. Not if Nelson can help it!
The NASA organizational changes is Administrator Nelson’s attempt to wall off and protect SLS, and to justify the policy choices that he made when as a U.S. Senator he championed the SLS. He stubbornly refuses to recognize that SLS is a mistake. He is going to ride that bomb all the way down.
So be it. Nelson’s SLS folly will be also be Biden’s blunder.
SLS delenda est
I am trying t o work up the courage. I am a Dem, but its easy for me to see why Ballast Bill lost the election. I cant put my finger on it but its almost like he is an old used car salesman
edit…ok I watched a bit of it…latter perhaps the best part was the long shot where the signing interpretur was projected over him 🙂
“I am a Dem”
Indie here. Given current events, battleground polls, and the structural aspects of the 2022 mid-terms and 2024, you have my sympathies. It’s getting ugly here in the Great Lakes & Midwest.
I think that the next few months will be uglier 🙂
Having failed to knock off Gov. Hairgel here in CA, yours isn’t the only part of the country where things are getting ugly – or uglier.
the california GOP was destroyed by following a liar. the audit failed for trump in AZ…the house of lies continues
If that’s actually the case, the signs of it won’t be long in appearing. It will not, of course, succeed as a strategy. But it is characteristic of both doomed programs and the people who run them that they do stupid things in vain pursuit of a favorable outcome.
this town hall should be seen in the light of the reality that Ballast Bill (BB) is still recovering from a major legislative defeat. he got money in the infrastructure bill (and who knows if that passes, I think it will but) for infrastructure repairs at NASA but zero for the “Space industrial complex” based human landing system.
now he has kept it alive with the 100 million dollar “study deal” but in reality what he got was beaten in the best chance he will get as administrator to get more money for the program …
its unclear that there is enough money to go back to the Moon in any real sense.
Re: “its unclear that there is enough money to go back to the Moon in any real sense.”
I think it likely that once the money flow is established, lunar surface infrastructure and operations will be as hard to kill as the Space Shuttle was, the ISS is and James Webb and SLS have been. The money flow looks sparse now, but the tap is cracked open or, to mix metaphors :D, the foot is in the door.
One trick though is that the money has to either be flowing through the right districts or the members of the relevant committees have to change to represent where the money flows. Otherwise, the flow will remain sparse and in ever-present danger of being cut off.
As the ISS has shown, treaty obligations can also help greatly. Conversely, as the Europeans have learned numerous times in the past in relation to robotic efforts, mere international partnerships (as opposed to formal treaties) aren’t enough to guarantee seeing a program through to completion.
An interesting aspect is the “in any real sense” part. I imagine that something somewhat like Antarctica will eventuate, with a few different research stations of various sizes established by different nations and/or groups of nations, with a purpose of science and research but with an underlying purpose of having an established presence in the case of needing a basis to make a claim in the future to either territory or resources. Unlike with Antarctica, there will be commercial activity of various kinds mixed in, but it will be limited in nature and a lot of it robotic.
In a way, it’s hard to see that kind of limited presence not happening over the coming decades. As long as one country wants to do it, there will be competitors, status climbers and general joiner-in-ers who won’t want to be left behind, and as long as governments are there, there will be money to be made by companies. Eventually there will be tourism, but contemplating the multiple supporting tanker flights a Starship will need to get from Earth to the lunar surface is a bit sobering.
Overall though, likely lacking sufficient gravity for child rearing, not to mention nitrogen for food production, not to mention an atmosphere to burn up small micrometeorites or a magnetic field to protect from solar radiation, the Moon would seem to project for the foreseeable future as a resource drain that the nations of the world will have a limited appetite to fill. Nevertheless, once a toehold is established, things can grow in unanticipated ways, and doing anything on the Moon will be an exciting challenge for a long time to come
good comments…my perspective however is that I dont think that industry (this may be your “money flowing through the correct door) is interested any more in a lunar thing. I dont think that the pie is large enough
If by “industry” you mean the legacy OldSpace primes, you’re right. They want to do cost-plus “development” forever, but aren’t interested in actually going to the Moon or anywhere else, never mind doing anything useful once there. Fortunately, there is an entirely separate industry with very different ideas.
I dont think that there is any money for a lunar effort
Bezos better start selling off more of his Amazon stock, if he wants to see Blue Origin on the Moon. If he really has been subsidizing BO to the tune of a billion a year, then doubling that subsidy should be enough.
SLS delenda est
do you think that the “national coalition” is still intact?
The “unnatural coalition” members are sounding like they’re edging away from Bonzo Bezos. I’m guessing that they’ll stick around to see how the Court rules on HLS. Then the fun will begin. Maybe Jeff will sue them too.
LOL yes maybe
I think that they are falling apart…but I also think that Ballast Bill is slowly descoping the landing on the moon to be a fly around
You mean the ‘National Team’ HLS partnership? Depends on what you mean by “intact”.
If by some miracle, Blue Origin forces a contract on NASA by means of the lawsuit, or Congress coughs up a $3 billion yearly increase for the HLS budget, then sure the National Team will happily skip down the yellow brick road together, singing arm in arm. So the partnership will remain intact to take advantage of that unlikely circumstance.
But realistically, the failure of the National Team to win that initial HLS contract, pretty much ends that partnership even if they wanted to continue. No money = no National Team.
I can see Bezos possibly digging into his own pockets to self-fund a Blue Origin lunar lander. I can’t see him doing the same favor for Northrop-Grumman and Lockheed-Martin!
SLS delenda est
I think I agree with that…all of it
so let me ask you…do you think that the studies ongoing now (which I dont expect to come to much) will have the national team split into three for proposals or stay united?
Appendix N? I think? Ah, here it is, NextStep N. Sustainable HLS and risk reduction.
https://www.nasa.gov/nextst…
Oh, I think split, not united. In which case it will be very interesting to see the details of the various bidder’s proposals.
It looks like the bidding was limited to U.S. industry? Pity that. I think both ESA and JAXA have the talent and money to come up with a lunar lander themselves.
SLS delenda est
I think it is all about to come apart…ie that the contractors have figured out that blue cannot do it, and that their only chance is some new approach. frankly I dont know what that is
SLS and Orion’s budgets are safe. And SpaceX can build a lander for what was bid. So I don’t see where the hold-up comes in. We can get back to the Moon, even doing it NASA-style. After that, SpaceX can do it SpaceX-style multiple times per year.
SLS and Orion cannot get us back to the Moon…and its unclear where SpaceX is going in terms of a final product…it will take this decade for SpaceX to sort out Starship…and no one knows what it will finally be capable of
Nelson’s Last Stand in defense of his SLS baby.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
SLS delenda est
things do seem to be closing in. Son of the Morning Star 🙂
Not so fast. The Indians won the battle but lost the war. Ballast and Free may be able to breathe even more life into SLS funding. A better picture might be of Brutus (Ballast) stabbing Julius Caesar (Elon) in the back.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Dude, your Brutus analogy doesn’t fit at all. Nelson has never been a friend or ally of SpaceX.
Et tu gunsandrockets? My point is that Nelson came on board NASA with nothing but praise for the HLS award. But it looks like he’s already plunged the knife into Kathy’s back. And I suspect that Jim Free is sharpening his knives in defense of SLS. I hope that you’re right and I’m wrong.