Two Top NASA Spaceflight Leaders Replaced

One week after promising leadership changes stemming from the 2024 Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test incident, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has replaced the heads of the Space Operations Mission Directorate and the Commercial Crew Program. Ken Bowersox is retiring and Steve Stich is moving to another position at the agency. Their deputies will take over for now. An internal review of NASA’s decision-making process and findings from a separate NASA advisory panel criticize how decisions were made even though in the end the two CFT crew members, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, made a safe return on a different spacecraft.

Bowersox is a former astronaut who made five spaceflights before retiring from NASA the first time in 2006. On February 1, 2003, he was aboard the International Space Station (ISS) on his final NASA mission when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry, killing all seven astronauts aboard. He and his Russian crewmates had to remain on the ISS for several extra months. After leaving NASA he worked in the private sector, including three years at SpaceX, and then returned to the agency in 2019. In 2023, he was Deputy to the Associate Administrator for the Space Operations Mission Directorate (SOMD), Kathy Lueders, and took over when she retired from NASA and moved to SpaceX.

Lueders had been manager of the Commercial Crew Program (CCP) before moving to headquarters to run SOMD in 2020. Stich was her deputy and succeeded her in that position.

Their deputies similarly are replacing them. Effective immediately, Joel Montalbano is the Acting AA for SOMD and Dana Hutcherson is the Acting CCP Manager.

Montalbano was ISS Program Manager at Johnson Space Center before moving to headquarters in April 2024. A NASA civil servant since 1988, he also has served as a NASA flight director and director of NASA’s Human Space Flight Program in Russia.

SOMD manages the ISS program, including the commercial spacecraft that ferry crew and cargo there; the commercial LEO destination (CLD) program to facilitate development of commercial space stations to replace the ISS; the Launch Services Program; Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN); and several others.

Hutcherson began her career with the United Space Alliance, which managed Space Shuttle operations for NASA, as an airframe engineer. She joined NASA in 2006 as a member of the Shuttle Operations and Integration Division and vehicle processing engineer for Space Shuttle Atlantis, eventually becoming flow director for Space Shuttle Endeavour. She joined the CCP team after the shuttle program ended and rose to Deputy Program Manager in 2024.

Isaacman did not mention any connection to Starliner in today’s press release about the change in leadership. He praised Montalbano and Hutcherson as “exceptionally well-qualified to serve in these acting roles,” without indicating how long they will remain in those positions.

He had nothing but praise for Bowersox in a statement to SpacePolicyOnline.com last night shortly after Bowersox announced his retirement: “As associate administrator for Space Operations, Ken has guided one of the most complex operational missions in the world, supporting our astronauts, our launch capabilities, and continuous operations in low Earth orbit. Ken has always focused on the mission and on the people who make it possible. NASA is stronger because of his leadership and service. Please join me in thanking Ken and wishing him and his family the very best in the next chapter.”

NASA’s press release today didn’t mention Stich at all, only that Hutcherson would take over as acting CCP manager immediately. In a statement to SpacePolicyOnline.com, NASA said Stich will remain with the agency and work with the Human Landing System (HLS) program that oversees the Public-Private Partnerships with SpaceX and Blue Origin to build systems to take astronauts between lunar orbit and the surface of the Moon.

Today’s leadership changes come in the wake of Isaacman’s hastily called press conference one week ago criticizing NASA’s decision not to declare a Type-A Mishap during Starliner’s CFT mission in 2024 and other decision-making. He said at the time leadership changes would be made.

Starliner CFT was the first crewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner commercial crew spacecraft. A 2019 uncrewed test flight encountered numerous problems and although a 2022 uncrewed flight was more successful, Starliner continued to encounter serious setbacks right up until CFT launched in June 2024 with Butch and Suni onboard. A helium leak in a reaction control system thruster and a “design vulnerability” were discovered by chance when the rocket had to roll back to a processing facility for other reasons days before the scheduled liftoff. NASA and Boeing decided to proceed anyway. Once in space, several thrusters failed while Starliner was getting ready to dock with the ISS.

NASA and Boeing spent weeks deciding whether Starliner was safe enough to bring the crew home, ultimately deciding it was not. The internal independent review released last week and the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) report that came out yesterday detail what they see as flaws in how NASA dealt with the issues in addition to concerns about Starliner more generally.

Ultimately, Butch and Suni stayed on the ISS months longer than expected and returned to Earth on a SpaceX Crew Dragon in March 2025. Starliner CFT came back empty in September 2024, experiencing another anomaly — a thruster failure in the Crew Module — on the way.  NASA and Boeing have been working together ever since to determine the root cause of the thruster failures and get Starliner ready to fly again. They will perform another uncrewed flight, perhaps this spring, before putting crew aboard. Isaacman said NASA is committed to helping make Starliner a success because it will be needed to support not only ISS, but future commercial space stations.

Following the termination of the Space Shuttle program in 2011, NASA awarded Boeing and SpaceX fixed price contracts in 2014 to develop two dissimilar crew transportation systems to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS through Public-Private Partnerships. Boeing was awarded $4.2 billion, and SpaceX, $2.6 billion. NASA wanted two systems to make sure at least one was available if the other was delayed or grounded.

SpaceX’s first Crew Dragon, Endeavour, made its debut flight in 2020.  Crew Dragons are reusable and four others have been built — Resilience, Endurance, Freedom, and Grace. All together they have taken 20 astronaut crews to the ISS or other earth-orbit destinations. Isaacman financed and flew two of the latter — Inspiration4 in 2021 and Polaris Dawn in 2024 — spending three and five days, respectively, in free-flight with three companions on each mission.

Starliner still hasn’t made a successful crewed flight. Boeing must absorb the cost overruns because it is a fixed price contract. At last report a year ago, the total was about $2 billion. Until now, NASA had not publicly disclosed how much it’s been spending, but a Type-A Mishap is declared when costs exceed $2 million and Isaacman said it was a hundred times that. NASA did not immediately answer a SpacePolicyOnline.com query as to the exact amount of money, what it was spent for, or if it all came from SOMD’s budget.

 

This article has been updated.