Who is nasa ceo

In , when Nelson was Senator he was the lead author of the law that authorised the programs of the agency for the years Development of the SLS was one of the programs authorised by this law. Nelson will now succeed Bridenstine, who served as the administrator for three years under the Trump administration and was formerly a Republican congressman from Oklahoma.

Click here to join our channel indianexpress and stay updated with the latest headlines. The Artemis timeline has always been ambitious, and the COVID pandemic caused serious delays, particularly to manufacturing. When President Barack Obama's administration argued for relying more on commercial partnerships, Nelson and his colleagues in the Senate stipulated that NASA should still build a heavy launch vehicle.

Fittingly, Nelson looks forward to the first SLS flight later this year, on the uncrewed Artemis 1 test mission around the moon.

NASA has said it is still targeting November for Artemis 1; however, an April report from NASA's Office of Inspector General determined that "the agency faces significant challenges that we believe will make its current plan to launch Artemis 1 in and ultimately land astronauts on the moon by the end of highly unlikely.

Whenever Artemis 1 does finally blast off, expect to see Nelson on the scene. When asked if he would attend the launch in person, he asked, "Is the pope Catholic? But even as the agency pushes to land astronauts on the moon, it is also navigating an increasingly complicated human spaceflight situation closer to Earth.

So far, NASA has held the monopoly on crewed spaceflights launched from the United States — either operating these missions directly or, in the case of a year's worth of SpaceX flights to the space station, contracting for a flight filled with government astronauts.

NASA will lose that monopoly this year as private spaceflight milestones fall rapidly. Blue Origin is targeting its first crewed suborbital flight, boasting passengers including founder Jeff Bezos , in July. Early in , the International Space Station itself will greet its first fully private crew for a weeklong stay in orbit, also launched by SpaceX.

And that's a form of spaceflight that may feel strangely familiar to Nelson, who brings a unique qualification to his role as NASA administrator. Although he was never a professional NASA astronaut like his deputy, Pamela Melroy , he spent a little over six days in orbit on the space shuttle Columbia as a payload specialist in At the time, he was both the representative for the district including Kennedy Space Center and the chair of the House Committee on Science and Technology's Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications.

With the flight, he became the second sitting congressperson to reach orbit through NASA's initiative to permit the chairs of its appropriations and authorizations committees to fly in space "in connection with their NASA oversight duties," according to a NASA statement reported by the New York Times at the time. At the time, the program was controversial.

Crewmates allegedly nicknamed Nelson "Ballast" because science investigators didn't want their research in his less-experienced hands. But that template for spaceflight isn't so different from the flights that will begin later this year as journeys to orbit become accessible to non-NASA employees, this time based on their wealth, luck or connections rather than position within Congress.

And in Nelson's eyes, more humans going to space is both good and, perhaps, inevitable. When asked what the value of more people experiencing space for themselves is, he said, "to understand the incredible creation upon which we live.

NASA administrators can seem like flight risks, and Nelson certainly does. For many of these private flights, Nelson won't have much to do. For missions like Axiom Space's January flight , when commercial passengers will visit the space station, Nelson sees a more active role for NASA to play in ensuring the safety of all involved, although he complimented Axiom's approach of hiring a retired NASA astronaut to lead each flight and guide interactions between the visiting crew and the long-term astronauts.

Although human spaceflight is clearly where Nelson's enthusiasm lies, he will also of course be overseeing major science plans the agency has underway. Perhaps the starkest change in course under Nelson and the Biden administration that selected him comes in the Earth science portfolio, which Trump repeatedly tried to trim. Biden has made climate change a cornerstone of his administration's priorities, and Nelson says that NASA has a leading role to play there.

Nelson has already unveiled the first Earth science initiative of his administration, a five-mission program called the Earth Systems Observatory that draws on a outline for how Earth science should progress over the next decade. The first mission in the program, a satellite to study how Earth's surface changes during earthquakes, landslides and other hazards that has been in the works for nearly a decade, will launch in January And Nelson has already gotten to make the first mission selection announcement of his term.

On June 2, he announced that the agency would fly two new spacecraft to Venus as part of its midsize Discovery mission planetary science program.

So, Nelson has overseen a lot of action — and he's been in office for less than two months. Trump nominated Bridenstine to lead the agency in September , but the confirmation process was contentious and the Senate did not approve the nomination until April , leaving NASA in the hands of acting administrator Robert Lightfoot for 15 months. NASA leadership will now need to decide whether to repeat the test or push toward an uncrewed launch scheduled for the end of this year.

In addition, the agency will attempt a difficult feat in just under a month when its Mars rover, Perseverance, lands on the Red Planet on Feb. And the agency, like the rest of the federal government, is confronting a twin crisis of public and economic health prompted by the COVID pandemic. I am thankful for their willingness to step up to lead during these difficult times and help us make sure the government continues to operate and serve the American people.

Copyright Space. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Meghan Bartels is a science journalist based in New York City.