The Galveston County Daily News

HOUSTON — The contractor that manages the space shuttle program from NASA will layoff 400 employees, including 160 from the area, as the space agency phases out the orbiter program.

The United Space Alliance is planning to make the cuts in October, a company spokesman said.

That is the start of the fiscal year, as well as the final year of the shuttle program.

NASA has scheduled six shuttle launches for 2010.

“This adjustment addresses that part of the 2010 scenario,” company spokesman Jeff Carr, said.

“It’s all contingent on the current plan. If that changes in any way, that will affect our plans as well.”

United Space Alliance, which is an equal partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, employs about 9,300 people, with 40 percent of them working at its operations near the Johnson Space Center.

Carr said the company expects most of the company reductions will come from voluntary resignations.

The decision to announce the cuts now hopefully will eliminate the need to make layoffs piecemeal as the shuttle program comes to a close next year, Carr said.

“A lot of folks have been hanging on and waiting to hear what the plans were going to be,” Carr said.

Even with the shuttle program winding down and the announced layoffs, Carr said United Space Alliance has been able to maintain the lowest attrition rate — 4.2 percent — in the company’s history.

“Most of that is people doing what they can to make sure the final chapter of the shuttle program goes well,” he said.