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For release: 10/24/02
Release #: 02-270
Keith Hefner of NASA's Marshall Center named program manager for Chandra X-ray Observatory
Keith Hefner of the Marshall Center has been named program manager for NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. He will be responsible for planning, budgeting and operations for the world's most powerful X-ray telescope.
Photo: Hefner (NASA/MSFC)
Keith Hefner of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., has been named program manager for NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. He will be responsible for planning, budgeting and operations for the world's most powerful X-ray telescope.
"It's a true honor to oversee the Chandra program," he said. "Roughly a billion times more powerful than the first X-ray telescopes, Chandra has proven itself a marvel of science and engineering since its launch in 1999. I'm confident more great discoveries are just around the corner.
"Three years into its scheduled 10-year mission, the Chandra Observatory already has enabled scientists to identify never-before-seen phenomena such as a black hole gobbling up matter in our own Milky Way Galaxy, a hot spot of X-rays pulsating from near Jupiter's poles, and a small galaxy being cannibalized by a larger one.
Hefner, who has a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, joined the Marshall Center in 1985 and was assigned to the Observatory Projects Office in 1986, where he specialized in project and resource management with the Chandra and Hubble Space Telescope programs.
He joined Marshall's Flight Projects Directorate in 2000 when the Chandra Program Office became part of the Flight Projects Directorate, and has served in positions of increasing responsibility, most recently as team lead for the Chandra Support Team within the directorate's Resources Group of its Business Management Office.
The recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and the Silver Snoopy Award recognizing contributions to the Space Shuttle program, Hefner succeeds Tony Lavoie, recently appointed deputy director of the Flight Projects Directorate.
Hefner and his wife, the former Suzanne Bizarth, both natives of Boaz, Ala., reside in Huntsville. They are the parents of two children.
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