Former NASA chief engineer Michael Griffin has been confirmed by the US Senate as the US space agency's 11th administrator. He started work on Thursday 14 April. A passionate supporter of human spaceflight, he criticised the development timetable for the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) during his US Congressional confirmation hearing last week as being too slow. The CEV will carry at least four astronauts into low-Earth orbit. Industry consortia are preparing bids to develop the vehicle, with a suborbital test flight in 2008, an unmanned orbital flight in 2011 and maiden manned flight in 2014.
Source: Flight International
