Nasa’s Alabama facility to serve as moon spacecraft headquarters

Now, I will say this was not a decision that was made lightly Jim Bridenstine Nasa Administrator

washington — Nasa Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama will anchor the US space agency’s programme to build a spacecraft to put astronauts back on the moon by 2024, a boon for the state and a disappointment for Texas.

Bridenstine, accompanied by US lawmakers from Alabama, made the announcement about the Nasa Artemis lunar programme at the Huntsville facility in front of a 149-foot-tall (45 metres) test version of a fuel tank for Nasa’s heavy-lift moon rocket, the Space Launch System.

The announcement, which promises to bring jobs and prestige to Alabama, disappointed lawmakers from Texas who had lobbied for the lunar lander programme to be headquartered at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, which under Nasa’s announcement will play a secondary role.

“Now, I will say this was not a decision that was made lightly,” Bridenstine said. He said 363 jobs will be created following the announcement, 140 of which will be in Huntsville and 87 in Houston.

The Johnson Space Center, which managed Apollo and other Nasa human spaceflight programmes in the past, will help assimilate US astronauts with the lunar lander and manage all Artemis missions beginning in 2020, when the programme’s debut unmanned flight to space is due, Nasa said.

“I am disappointed by the decision from Nasa to not place the lunar lander programme management at the Johnson Space Center,” Republican Representative Brian Babin of Texas, who had planned to attend the ceremony but cancelled on Thursday, said in a statement. —