NASA officials have pulled astronaut and Navy
captain Lisa Nowak from her spaceflyer detail in a mutual agreement with
Naval authorities, the U.S. space agency announced Wednesday.
The
announcement comes as Nowak faces
attempted kidnapping charges stemming from a Feb. 5 confrontation with a
romantic rival over the affections of space
shuttle pilot Bill Oefelein.
"NASA
requested an end to the detail because the agency lacks the administrative
means to deal appropriately with the criminal charges facing Nowak," NASA
officials said in a statement.
NASA's
civil servant employees can be placed on administrative leave, leave without
pay or indefinite suspension, none of which are applicable to the agency's active military
personnel and astronauts like Nowak, NASA spokesperson Nicole
Cloutier-Lemasters, of the agency's Johnson Space Center, told SPACE.com. The decision is not a reflection of NASA's belief in Nowak's innocence or guilt, she stressed.
"Our
options were to remove
her from flight status, which was done, to put her on leave,
which was done, and the only other remaining option was to end the detail," David
Mould, a spokesperson at the agency's Washington D.C. headquarters, added.
Nowak, a
mother of three, first joined NASA's astronaut ranks in 1996 and made her
only spaceflight last July during the space agency's STS-121
shuttle mission to the International Space
Station [image].
The space agency placed Nowak on a 30-day leave
following her initial arrest, then later removed her from flight status and replaced
her Mission Control assignment as spacecraft communicator for the upcoming STS-117
shuttle flight in April.
Police
officers in Orlando, Florida arrested Nowak on Feb. 5
after she allegedly drove 900 miles from Houston, Texas - home to NASA's astronaut
training grounds at the Johnson Space Center - to confront Colleen Shipman, Oefelein's
girlfriend, at the Orlando airport. Police say Nowak wore an adult diaper akin
to those used by astronauts to avoid unnecessary stops, donned a wig to
confront Shipman and sprayed her with pepper spray. Officers also stated that
they found a steel mallet, knife, rubber tubing and pellet gun in Nowak's car.
Nowak has pleaded not guilty
to charges of attempted kidnapping and burglary with assault.
According
to the Associated Press, documents released
by prosecutors this week included e-mails which confirmed that Oefelein [image],
a Navy commander who flew aboard NASA's
December shuttle flight, and Nowak had pursued a romantic relationship for
two to three years, ending in late 2006 before he began to date Shipman.
Because she
is a military officer, and not a civil servant, Nowak's status falls under the
jurisdiction of the U.S. Navy and is not subject to any administrative actions
by the space agency, NASA officials said. Nowak will now shift to her next Navy
assignment, NASA officials said.
"She has
orders, and she will be assigned to the staff of the chief of Naval Air
Training in Corpus Christie, Texas effective March 21," Commander Lydia
Robertson, a U.S. Navy spokesperson, told SPACE.com.
The U.S.
Navy and other Armed Forces have a memorandum of understanding with NASA in
which military personnel can apply to the space agency's astronaut corps if
they have the appropriate skills and positions are available.
"It is a
partnership with the Navy," Robertson said of Naval astronauts, adding that
process depends on an applicant's duty detail. "When it fits their designator,
the special code that they have that describes what their duties are, then they
will go work for NASA."
Cloutier-Lemasters
said NASA astronauts from the U.S. military have left the space agency's
Astronaut Corps in the past to return to their respective military branches.
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