NASA Names Lead Centers for Human Spaceflight Roles

NASA may be caught between a rock and a hard place — an authorization law telling them what to do, but continued uncertainty over how much money they will get to do it — but the agency nonetheless named lead centers to execute the policy enunciated in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act.

Kennedy Space Center (KSC) will be the lead center for “enabling commercial human spaceflight capabilities,” Johnson Space Center (JSC) will be responsible for developing the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), and Marshall Space Flight Center will take the lead for a new Space Launch System.

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden unofficially announced these assignments at a breakfast meeting on February 17 sponsored by the National Space Club in Washington, but the agency made it official in a press release yesterday. None is a surprise. JSC and Marshall are continuing familiar responsibilities and NASA’s attempts to woo commercial crew providers to use NASA’s Florida facilities made KSC a sure bet for that role.