Acting director leaving NASA next month

Robert M. Lightfoot Jr., NASA’s acting administrator for more than year, notified space agency employees Monday that he is retiring as of April 30.

Lightfoot said he was leaving “with bittersweet feelings,” but did not say why he was retiring.

Lightfoot’s departure could leave a vacuum at the top of NASA just as a revived National Space Council looks to revamp U.S. space policy.

The council, led by Vice President Mike Pence, is to coordinate what various agencies, military and civilian, are doing in space. The Trump administration’s latest budget proposal for NASA would end direct U.S. financing of the International Space Station by 2025 and spur the development of commercial alternatives.

Lightfoot, who was NASA’s associate administrator, took over as acting administrator when Charles F. Bolden Jr. stepped down at the end of President Barack Obama’s term.

In September, President Donald Trump nominated Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Okla., to be the next administrator. But the Senate has yet to vote to confirm Bridenstine. All 49 Democrats in the Senate appear unified in opposition, in part because Bridenstine gave a speech disparaging climate change several years ago.

The space agency’s No. 2 position, deputy administrator, is vacant and NASA is also lacking a chief of staff.