WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama nominated a former Marine aviator and space shuttle astronaut Saturday to become the head of NASA and oversee a broad review of the agency’s ambitions for manned and robotic space exploration.
Retired Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden Jr. will become the first African-American to run the space agency if he is approved by the Senate.
In addition to his long resume of military and NASA experience, Bolden served more recently as chief executive of a defense and aerospace consulting firm. He briefly worked as an aerospace lobbyist.
Bolden would take over NASA as it is winding down the decades-old shuttle program and working toward Obama’s stated goal of returning a man to the moon by 2020.
Obama also has endorsed the deployment of a climate-change research and monitoring system in space. But those ambitions are colliding with fiscal challenges posed by an $18.7 billion budget for the coming year, a modest 5 percent increase from the previous one.
In 2002, then-President George W. Bush unsuccessfully tried to appoint Bolden as the space agency’s deputy administrator. The Pentagon said it needed to keep Bolden, who was a Marine general at the time and a pilot who flew more than 100 sorties in Vietnam.
The diminutive salt-and-pepper haired Bolden said Saturday that he couldn’t talk until after his Senate confirmation.
“He’s a patriot, a leader and a visionary,” said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who flew on the space shuttle Columbia with Bolden in 1986. “He understands the workings of NASA and the importance of America remaining a leader in science and technology through space exploration.”
Obama also nominated Lori Garver, a former associate administrator of the agency, as NASA’s deputy administrator. Garver was Obama’s chief adviser for civilian space policy during the 2008 presidential campaign. She is president of Capital Space, a consulting firm.
Charles F. Bolden Jr.
Background: Bolden, 62, grew up in segregated South Carolina and won a commission to the U.S. Naval Academy.
Marine career: As a Marine aviator, he flew more than 100 sorties over North and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Decades later, he served in the Persian Gulf before retiring from the Marine Corps in 2004.
NASA career: He has gone on four shuttle missions and commanded two, the last in 1994. He has more than 680 hours in space. He has served in other positions at the space agency, including as an assistant deputy administrator.
Current position: He is the chief executive of JackandPanther, a Houston-based military and aerospace consulting firm.
