Key Senate NASA Staffer Moving on to Lockheed Martin

Ann Zulkosky, the top Senate Democratic staffer dealing with NASA issues on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, is leaving to join Lockheed Martin.

Zulkosky is a member of the Democratic professional staff of the committee, which is chaired by Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV).  Rockefeller is retiring at the end of this Congress and committee staff changes are common when the chairperson retires.  Zulkosky has been handling a variety of science issues, but is best known in space policy circles for her work on NASA issues with Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), who chairs the committee’s Science and Space Subcommittee.

Zulkosky and her Republican staff counterpart, Jeff Bingham, working with Nelson and the committee’s top Republican at the time, Senator Kay Bailey Hutichison (R-TX), are largely credited with writing the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, a hard fought compromise between the Obama Administration and congressional Democrats and Republicans.  Bingham retired last year.

The 2010 law included funding recommendations only through FY2013, which has expired, but the policy provisions remain in force.  Key policy provisions allowed the Obama Administration to proceed with the commercial crew program to develop crew transportation systems to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS), while insisting that NASA also develop a new spacecraft (Orion) and rocket (the Space Launch System) to take astronauts beyond low Earth orbit.

The House passed a new NASA authorization bill in June.  Senate action is expected next, but that may be more difficult to achieve with Zulkosky’s departure.

In an email this evening, Zulkosky confirmed that she is headed to Lockheed Martin as Director of NASA Programs, succeeding Mike Hawes.  Hawes was recently tapped to replace Cleon Lacefield as the company’s vice president and program manager for Orion.