Posted: Wed, Apr 2, 2008, 7:42 AM ET (1142 GMT)
The impending retirement of the space shuttle will result in the loss of up to 9,000 jobs at NASA centers, according to a preliminary estimate released by NASA on Tuesday. The Kennedy Space Center would suffer the most job losses, with between 5,700 and 6,400 contractor positions to be eliminated by 2011, the year after the shuttle is retired. The Michoud Assembly Facility, where the shuttle's external tanks are built, could lose up to 1,300 of its current 1,900 jobs. Some of those job losses would be mitigated by work on Constellation, the next generation of launch vehicles and spacecraft planned by NASA, and NASA officials said changes in NASA funding could also affect job losses.

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