Why did NASA's human spaceflight chief Doug Loverro abruptly resign? - Space.com

Doug Loverro served as the associate administrator of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate for less than seven months before he resigned from the position on Monday (May 18) — nine days before two NASA astronauts are scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on a test flight to the International Space Station. .

Related: NASA's human spaceflight chief optimistic for moon 2024 goals.

First, Loverro said that the reason for his resignation had nothing to do with NASA's commercial crew program, which has contracted SpaceX and Boeing to begin launching astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

"The biggest false rumor, the one that I was most concerned about and I think the agency was most concerned about … was that there was a problem with the commercial crew launch coming up next week that I resigned over, and nothing could be further from the truth," Loverro told Space.com.

On March 25, the OIG announced on Twitter that it was opening an audit into NASA's acquisition strategy for its Artemis program, which aims to put humans on the moon in 2024. !

OIG announces audit of NASA’s acquisition strategy for the Artemis missions to include landing astronauts on the Moon by 2024.March 25, 2020.

Several media outlets have speculated that Loverro's mistake may have happened during the procurement process for human landing systems that will take NASA's Artemis astronauts to the moon. On April 30, about two weeks before Loverro resigned, NASA announced the three teams the agency has selected to develop the Artemis moon landers: SpaceX, a Blue Origin-led team and Dynetics.

When asked if the circumstances of his resignation will be made public in the future, pending an investigation into his mistake, Loverro said, "I can't tell you that.

Whatever Loverro did, it apparently had something to do with NASA's Artemis program — and with the lofty goal of putting humans on the moon in brand-new spacecraft just four years from now. 

And obviously the mission was to get to the moon by 2024," Loverro said