To achieve major goals, NASA seeks to streamline its organization - Ars Technica

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NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman sent a long email to employees on Friday morning outlining several structural changes that are intended to make the sprawling agency more efficient and allow it to better accomplish major goals, such as returning to the Moon and building a base there.

“I believe it is imperative to concentrate resources towards the highest priority objectives in the National Space Policy and liberate the best and brightest from needless bureaucracy and obstacles that impede progress,” Isaacman wrote in his 3,000-word letter.

Isaacman’s message stressed that no one at NASA will lose their jobs, and no field centers will be closed as part of these changes. Rather, the overall intent is to improve operational efficiency and focus on the agency’s core missions. Isaacman laid these out as: execute on the Artemis Program to return humans to the Moon; build an enduring Moon Base; develop a “Space Reactor Office” to get America underway on nuclear power in space; ignite an economy in low-Earth orbit; and build more X-planes and launch more science missions.

The changes appear to be an effort to reduce overhead and top-down management within NASA and return more power and decision-making to field centers. They attempt to reverse a decades-long trend at NASA toward bureaucracy and fiefdom building within the organization.

Two sources who previously worked at NASA and are familiar with its structural inefficiencies told Ars that these changes are, on balance, very positive for the agency. “I was concerned there was going to be more of a consolidation of authority at headquarters,” one of the people told Ars. “Instead this all appears to be broadly helpful to the mission.”

Consolidation of mission leadership

Previously, NASA had six main “Mission Directorates” that oversee its core areas, such as human exploration, science, and aeronautics. These are being combined into four directorates.

Why the change? According to NASA officials, it’s to simplify things for program leaders. Instead of needing to go to several different directorates for resources and major decisions, they will have to navigate fewer channels.

The leaders of the Mission Directorates below will also now report directly to Isaacman instead of Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya, the agency’s top civil servant. This is to allow Kshatriya to take more technical ownership of projects within the agency. Widely respected among his peers, Kshatriya will accordingly also become chief engineer of NASA.

The consolidations are:

Combine Space Operations and Exploration Systems Development into a single Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate . The goal is to unify the strengths of NASA’s Exploration and Space Operations communities into a streamlined organization, built to deliver on the next era of human spaceflight.

Lori Glaze as Associate Administrator, with Joel Montalbano and Kelvin Manning as Deputies.

Within the directorate, the primary divisions will be:

Low Earth Orbit, Dana Weigel as Program Manager (to include Commercial Crew, ISS, Commercial space stations)

Moon Base, Carlos Garcia-Galan as Program Manager

Artemis, Jeremy Parsons as Program Manager (renamed from Moon to Mars)

Aeronautics Research and Space Technology Mission Directorate will combine into a single Research and Technology Mission Directorate . This will unify NASA’s aeronautics, space technology, and nuclear power and propulsion capabilities into a single, fast-moving organization focused on delivering the breakthrough technologies our missions and the Nation require.

Dr. James Kenyon as Associate Administrator, with Wanda Peters as Deputy.

Within the directorate, the primary divisions will be:

Aeronautics, Laurie Grindle as Director

Advanced Research and Technology, Greg Stover as Director

Space Reactor Office, Steve Sinacore as Acting Director

Space Communications and Navigation, Kevin Coggins as Director

The Science Mission Directorate, under Nicky Fox, and Mission Support Directorate, under John Bailey, will be unchanged . However NASA will seek to streamline functions within Mission Support that overlap between headquarters and shift those responsibilities back to field centers.

Empowering field centers

A major theme in the letter is giving field centers more opportunities to focus on their core capabilities instead of competing in a cutthroat environment for resources.

Although NASA’s internal budgeting is not well...