Expected Departure Is Latest in Top-Level NASA Changes : Johnson Space Center Chief May Resign

Jesse Moore, director of the space shuttle program at the time of the Challenger disaster last January, met privately with NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher earlier this week and space agency sources said he is expected to step down as head of the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Moore, 46, was en route back to Houston Wednesday and could not be reached for comment, but there had been rumors for weeks that he would leave the directorship of the complex that trains American astronauts and directs the country’s manned space flights.

His expected departure would be the latest in a series of top management changes at NASA since the shuttle accident that brought the space program to a standstill.

Follows Other Managers

Already the directors of the Kennedy and Marshall Space centers, the other field installations most intimately involved with the shuttle program, have been replaced, along with the top management of the solid rocket booster program at Marshall.

In July, Richard Smith retired as director of the Kennedy Center in Florida, and William Lucas retired as director of the Marshall Center in Alabama. A report published in the Orlando Sentinel Wednesday said that Moore had asked Fletcher to be reassigned from Houston to Washington.

At the time of the Challenger accident, Moore, a graduate of the University of Southern California and a one-time engineer at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was serving as director of the shuttle program and had been designated as the head of the Johnson Space Center.

Shortly after the accident, he moved to the Houston job, and the shuttle program was turned over to Rear Adm. Richard Truly, a former astronaut.

Systematic Reshuffling

NASA and congressional sources said that Fletcher set out to systematically reshape the space agency’s management during the hiatus in the manned space flight program.

Besides the top-level management changes at the NASA field centers, the agency has also seen the departure of William R. Graham, its deputy director, who became President Reagan’s science adviser. He is being replaced by Dale D. Myers, a former aerospace industry executive and top NASA official during the 1970s.

Since moving to Houston, Moore has remained out of the public spotlight. During the investigation of the Challenger accident by the presidential commission headed by William P. Rogers, he testified that he had not known details of growing concern over the O-ring seals in the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters. But Michael Weeks, another program official, told a congressional committee that he had briefed Moore about the problems with the rocket joint. Failure of the joint has been blamed for the shuttle’s explosion after launch last Jan. 28.

Enters New Battle

As the shuttle controversy waned, Moore found himself in the midst of a new battle over management assignments for NASA’s planned $8-billion space station.

Top management responsibility for the station was moved from Houston to Washington, and the Johnson center became embroiled in a dispute with Marshall center over the roles each would play in the space station development.

Moore, said one of his Washington friends, was in a no-win situation in the controversy. By supporting the move of space station management to Washington, he displeased colleagues in Houston, and if he tried to maintain project management in Houston, he put himself at odds with his superiors at NASA headquarters.