Eun Kim in Washington reports...The space shuttle's retirement is listed as one of 13 "urgent issues" that government auditors believe need immediate attention from President-elect Barack Obama.
"The administration needs to move quickly to nominate and fill key leadership positions within NASA because the decision on whether to retire or continue operating the Space Shuttle will need to be made soon," the Government Accountability Office said in a summary of its decision.
NASA currently plans to retire the shuttle fleet at the end of 2010 and its replacement isn't scheduled to take astronauts back into space for another five years after that. However, the agency has been studying the cost of adding more flights and extending the fleet's service and Obama promised during the campaign to increase the agency's budget by $2 billion a year to cut the gap in human flights.
The GAO identified the shuttle's retirement as an issue it wants the Obama administration to address within the next six months, which could bode well for thousands of space shuttle workers at Kennedy Space Center whose jobs are hanging on decisions made about whether to end the program in 2010 or not.
The other dozen "urgent issues" are listed on a new Web site the GAO launched this morning. The other issues include defense spending and security, oversight of the financial institutions and markets and the 2010 census.
The list can be found here: Click to see report
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