Trump names six more to NASA 'landing team'

US President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has added six more members to the NASA ?landing team? overseeing transition planning for the space agency, media reported.

Among the new landing team members is Gregory Autry, Assistant Professor of Clinical Entrepreneurship at University of Southern California, who is known as a supporter of commercial spaceflight.

His research context is the new space business, where startup firms are commercializing space launch, spacecraft, and related services, according to his profile at the University of Southern California.

Autry has been a serial entrepreneur in video games, computer services, Internet content, enterprise applications, health care IT and material upcycling.

Steve Cook, who was in charge of the Ares 1 and Ares 5 rocket programmes at NASA?s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, until leaving the agency in 2009 for Huntsville-based Dynetics, is another member of the team, spacenews.com reported on Friday.

Jack Burns, Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder; Rodney Liesveld, a former senior policy adviser at NASA; Sandy Magnus, a former NASA astronaut who flew on three missions, including a 4.5-month stay on the International Space Station; and Jeff Waksman, a former research fellow at the US House of Representatives are the other new members of the landing team, the report added.

The NASA landing team is led by Chris Shank, who worked for NASA from 2005 to 2009, during the tenure of administrator Mike Griffin.

--IANS

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