Robotic Center to Close in Move to Focus on Orion
Among the actions NASA recommends in its fiscal 2007 operating plan is shutting down the Lunar Precursor and Robotic Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center, where a whole generation of unmanned orbiters, rovers, hoppers and penetrators was under consideration as scouts for a human landing on the moon.
Management of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), a piggyback pair of impactors to be carried on the 2008 Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), will be pulled into NASA headquarters, but the rest will be dropped in keeping with the agency’s decision to focus on replacing the space shuttle with the Orion/Ares I stack. Read more
