Video: Orion flight preps

NASA hopes to have a new leader for the agency’s human spaceflight directorate by the end of the year to replace Bill Gerstenmaier, who held the post for nearly 14 years before his reassignment in July amid the Trump administration’s push to land humans on the moon by 2024, a NASA official said Wednesday.

NASA has announced two veteran space shuttle engineers have taken charge of space agency’s Space Launch System and Orion deep space exploration projects after their previous managers both took the No. 2 jobs at space centers in Alabama and Texas.

Fresh home from a high-flying test flight Friday that took it 3,600 miles above Earth, NASA’s Orion spacecraft was pulled off a U.S. Navy recovery ship Monday night for initial inspections before a cross-country trip to its home base in Florida.