Former LM chief named to panel

The long-term plan for human spaceflight will have to wait until the end of the summer at the earliest while a panel headed by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine reviews it at the request of the White House. The panel will include NASA insiders and outside experts to review the Bush-era "Vision for Space Exploration." Among topics to be covered will be narrowing the post-shuttle gap in delivering crews to the International Space Station on U.S. vehicles; pushing human exploration beyond low Earth orbit to the moon and beyond, and boosting commercial human spaceflight, according to John Holdren, Obama's science adviser. (Source: Aviation Week, 05/08/09) Gulf Coast note: Stennis Space Center in Mississippi and Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans are both involved in the space program.