NASA continues to reshape its leadership tier.
The agency announced a number of personnel moves on Monday (Feb. 24), including the selection of Vanessa Wyche as acting associate administrator.
“Vanessa will bring exceptional leadership to NASA’s senior ranks, helping guide our workforce toward the opportunities that lie ahead,” NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro said in a statement on Monday.
The associate administrator serves as NASA’s chief operating officer, overseeing its 18,000 employees and nearly $25 billion budget, agency officials wrote in the statement. Wyche succeeds Jim Free, who retired a few days ago after 35 years at NASA.
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Wyche formerly led Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, the agency’s main human spaceflight hub. Stephen Koerner, who had been JSC’s deputy director, will take on the top job at the Houston center.
Koerner’s wife, Catherine, is currently associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. She’ll retire on Friday (Feb. 28), agency officials announced, and will be replaced on an acting basis by Lori Glaze, who’s now the directorate’s deputy.
NASA has also named Jackie Jester as associate administrator for the Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs, according to Monday’s statement. In that role, she “will direct a staff responsible for managing and coordinating all communication with the U.S. Congress, as well as serve as a senior advisor to agency leaders on legislative matters,” NASA officials wrote.
Jester had been senior director for government affairs at the Washington offices of the company Relativity Space. Before that job, she had worked as a policy advisor at NASA and at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, according to Monday’s statement.
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Petro replaced Bill Nelson, who stepped down as NASA administrator on Jan. 20, the day Donald Trump began his second term as president. She isn’t the long-haul pick, however; Trump has nominated entrepreneur and private astronaut Jared Isaacman as NASA chief, but Isaacman has not yet been confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Leadership shakeups and uncertainty are common when new presidential administrations take the reins, but the current transition has been especially eventful for NASA and other federal agencies.
For example, NASA braced for a cut of about 1,000 probationary employees earlier this month — part of a broad effort to downsize the federal workforce by Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is led by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. NASA was spared the cuts at the 11th hour, but it’s unclear if that decision will be the last word on the matter.
Over the weekend, NASA employees — and others across the federal workforce — received an email from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management asking them to detail five of their accomplishments during the previous week. Failure to respond promptly would be considered a resignation, Musk wrote on X.
On Monday, however, NASA officials said in a statement that the agency is “not requiring any individual employee to respond” to the email. “NASA leadership is responding to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) request on behalf of the agency workforce,” the statement reads.
