NASA announces 900 job cuts ahead of shuttle retirement

NASA has this week announced plans to significantly scale back its employee numbers ahead of the official retirement of its stalwart fleet of space shuttle vehicles after almost 30 years of service.

According to NASA officials, a total of 900 jobs will be cut over the next five months, with an initial 160 notifications in relation to external contractors responsible for the manufacturing of the shuttle’s fuel tanks and its solid rocket boosters expected to be dispatched on Friday, May 01.

Described by the U.S. space administration as “the first significant loss of manufacturing capability,” for the shuttle program, further job cuts will come into effect throughout the summer as the remaining trio of space shuttles work to complete their final eight scheduled missions.

The next shuttle launch, expected on May 11 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, will see Atlantis and its crew blasted towards the aging Hubble Space Telescope for an 11-day maintenance and repair mission.

Once officially decommissioned as a space-worthy fleet, the shuttles will be replaced by new Orion space capsules and Ares rockets, which will carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) and also on a planned manned mission to the moon.

However, the Orion and Ares projects are not expected to be ready until around 2015. In the meantime, NASA’s access to the ISS will be reliant on passage via Russian Soyuz missions.