There has been a lot of media coverage of S. Alan Stern’s departure as head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD). Stern lasted less than a year on the job before abruptly resigning on Wednesday in the wake of the agency’s decision to rescind deep cuts in the popular Mars Exploration Rover program.
Because neither Stern nor NASA Administrator Mike Griffin revealed the precise reasons behind the departure, people were left speculating about a decision that has left the science community stunned.
“His departure is a shock to people,” Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., told Scientific American. “It means potentially a black day for science at NASA.”