WASHINGTON -- NASA is turning to one of its most frequent troubleshooters to shore up the embattled Mars exploration program.
Thomas Young, retired executive vice president of aerospace giant Lockheed Martin and a member of NASA's Advisory Council, was named Friday to head a sweeping review of the agencys Mars missions including this months loss of the Polar Lander mission.
Young is to form a panel that will report to NASA Administrator Dan Goldin by next spring on that failure and provide recommendations for how best to proceed with Mars missions. Among the members Young is expected to name to his panel is Planetary Society chief Bruce Murray, space.com has learned.
"I want them to go in and find out why some missions failed and what lessons can be learned," Goldin told space.com. "I want people to be non-defensive and openly work with the panel. Well listen to whatever they have to say and well do what we have to do to make the program better."
In a related development, Murray, now with the California Institute of Technology, is expected to be announced Friday as a senior advisor to Goldin to help out with planning for space exploration for the next decade.
Murray will have his offices at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, where he once served as its director.
Young, a former director of NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has extensive experience in putting NASA programs on track.
As head of the NASA Advisory Councils committee on the International Space Station, he has weighed in on issues of that programs burgeoning cost.
Young, along with former astronaut Gen. Thomas Stafford, also persuaded Goldin in a tense 11th-hour discussion in September 1997 that it was safe to allow Dave Wolf to fly to Russias beleaguered Mir space station as one of the final American astronauts in the face of rising public concern over the aging space stations safety.
This spring, Young conducted an independent review of Lockheed Martins space and missile business after a series of expensive and well-publicized failures of its Titan rockets and satellites.
"Projects rarely fail because of large flaws," he once wrote in an industry paper called "The Best Job in Aerospace."
"Usually its overlooking the seemingly small details that dooms otherwise sound programs." The "best job," he went on, is that of a project manager, a position "often filled with frustration, stress and risk taking," but one that offers the chance of "being where the action is."
Young, 62, a native Virginian and graduate of the University of Virginia, joined NASA in 1961 as a mission manager for the Lunar Orbiter project at Langley Research Center.
He later served as deputy director of Ames Research Center before taking over the helm at Goddard from 1980-82. He joined Martin Marietta in 1982 where he served as president and chief operating officer.
He became an executive vice president after the company merged with Lockheed.
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