NASA Boss Bill Nelson On a Space Race With China, the Future of the Space Station and More

It took Bill Nelson 35 years to go from low-Earth orbit to 300 E. St. in Washington, D.C. Low-Earth orbit is where Nelson, then a U.S. representative from Florida, spent six days as a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Columbia, from Jan. 12 to Jan. 18, 1986. He returned to Earth and eventually made his way to the U.S. Senate, serving from 2001 to 2019, and spending much of his tenure promoting one of his home state’s highest-profile industries—space—distinguishing himself as perhaps NASA’s most dogged legislative champion. In 2021, he was tapped to run the space show himself, when President Joe Biden appointed him NASA’s fourteenth Administrator, placing him in charge of the space agency’s sprawling, multi-state—and multi-planet—operation. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Nelson’s cosmic remit is a big one, and he recently spoke with TIME about the job, as well as the U.S.’s present—and, much more important, long-term—ambitions in space. NASA just completed a very good year—most spectacularly with the landing of the Perseverance rover on Mars, the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, and the completed construction of the new Space Launch System [SLS] moon rocket. To what do you attribute the space agency’s banner 2021? NASA is like the little engine that could—”I think I can, I think I can.” And that’s attributable to the extraordinary workfo...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news