NASA Glenn in suburban Cleveland names Dr. Maria Perez-Davis its acting director to replace the retiring Dr. Janet Kavandi, a retired astronaut, Perez-Davis a native of Puerto Rico and a current resident of Strongsville, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb.....By editor Kathy Wray Coleman of Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read digital women's rights and Black newspaper and Black blog
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| Dr. Maria Perez-Davis |
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CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio-NASA Glenn Research Center in Brookpark, Ohio in suburban Cleveland has named acting deputy director Dr. Maria Perez-Davis, a Strongsville, Ohio resident and native of Puerto Rico, as its acting director who will take over Tuesday in place of Dr. Janet Kavandi, the current director and former astronaut who will retire, effective Sept 30.
Both Brook Park and Strongsville are middle class suburbs of Cleveland, a largely Black major American city.
NASA officials have not said when a regular replacement for Kavandi will be named.
Perez-Davis has been employed with NASA Glenn since 1983 and is a former chief of electrochemistry and director of aeronautics research.
She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Puerto Rico, a master's of science degree from the University of Toledo, and a doctoral degree from Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University in chemical engineering.
In early June NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine endorsed Kavandi as deputy administrator of the agency, but the U.S. Senate, in July, and with support from the White House, confirmed Jim Morhard, a veteran Senate staffer and former deputy sergeant-at-arms for the Senate, for the position.
Thereafter, Kavandi, 60, announced her retirement from NASA.
Greater Cleveland women activists groups and some Democratic U.S. congressional lawmakers, including Ohio Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, whose ninth congressional district extends to Cleveland and Brook Park , Ohio where NASA Glenn is located, were watching relative to Kavandi's replacement, activists saying they want to make sure NASA's Cleveland agency has women and minorities in leadership roles in the 21st century.
NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field is one of 10 NASA field centers nationwide, NASA with the primary mission to develop science and technology for use in aeronautics and space.
A patented-winning chemist turned astronaut and ultimately director of NASA's Cleveland research facility, Kavandi, who traveled to space three times as an astronaut, has not said why she is retiring but said in a statement that she debated over her decision to leave NASA.
“It was a difficult decision to call my NASA career to an end, especially at a time when the agency is preparing to send the first woman and the next man to the moon,” said Kavandi. “The agency has provided me with experiences I could have never imagined, and it was an absolute honor to lead the men and women at NASA Glenn."
Director since 2016, Kavandi leaves the space agency with 25 years of service, and was an astronaut when Dr. Mae Jemison was among hardly a handful of U.S. women astronauts, Jemison, 62, the first Black woman in space, her one and only space mission undertaken in 1992 as part of the crew of the space shuttle Endeavor.
Some 59 different women total, including cosmonauts, astronauts, payload specialists, and foreign nationals have flown in space worldwide, the first woman making a space mission in 1963, and former astronaut Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space in 1983, more than 40 American women following in her footsteps.
Ride died in 2012 at 61-year-old of pancreatic cancer.
Currently, NASA has some 38 active astronauts nationwide, none of them Black.
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