Status Report

NASA ARC Internal Memo: Message from the Director Robotic Lunar Exploration Program at Ames

By SpaceRef Editor
August 10, 2005
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Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2005
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Centerwide Announcement
Subject: Message from the Director – Robotic Lunar
Exploration Program at Ames

Message from the Director Robotic Lunar Exploration Program at Ames

I am very pleased to announce the Center’s return to space flight program management through assigned responsibility for the Robotic Lunar Exploration Program (RLEP). Ames has a 40-year history of excellent space flight program and project management: the Pioneer 6 – 13 series, the Galileo Probe and the Lunar Prospector. Following the Lunar Prospector mission, however, the Center largely devoted itself to different priorities. This assignment permits us to resume our role in the space flight business.

The return to the moon is the first new step of the Exploration program, and robotic exploration of the moon is the first step in that return. I am proud that Mike Griffin and Doug Cook, the acting AA for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, have entrusted Ames with managing that first step for the Agency. RLEP is on the critical path for informing critical design and operations decisions related to the Exploration Architecture for human missions to the moon. At its heart, it involves both science and exploration. While the first mission, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, will continue to be managed and developed at GSFC, Ames has now assumed responsibility for the overall program in the future.

I believe that the RLEP marks the beginning of a renaissance of robotic space flight work at Ames, and I am confident that we will serve the agency well in this critical new role.

G. Scott Hubbard
Center Director

SpaceRef staff editor.