Fred Kennedy, the former director of the U.S. Space Development Agency, after his onstage interview at the Satellite Innovation conference in Mountain View, California, in 2019. Credit: SpaceNews/Brian Berger

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California — It came as a shock when Fred Kennedy resigned as director of the Space Development Agency less than five months into his tenure. Kennedy, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who led the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Tactical Technology Office, helped draft the memo establishing SDA before Mike Griffin, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, tapped him to lead the organization.

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Debra Werner is a correspondent for SpaceNews based in San Francisco. Debra earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in Journalism from Northwestern University. She is a recipient...

Brian Berger is editor in chief of SpaceNews.com and the SpaceNews magazine. He joined SpaceNews.com in 1998, spending his first decade with the publication covering NASA. His reporting on the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident was recognized with...