Posted: Sat, Nov 17, 2012, 10:18 AM ET (1518 GMT)
NASA announced Friday that the directors of the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and the Johnson Space Center in Houston will retire at the end of this year. Ray Lugo will retire as head of Glenn and will be replaced by James Free, who has been the center's deputy director since early 2011. At Johnson, former astronaut Michael Coats will retire and be replaced by another former astronaut, Ellen Ochoa, who has been the JSC deputy director since September 2007. The departures of Coats and Lugo had been rumored for weeks, although no reason for their stepping down other than retirement has been given.
