Charlie Bolden and Lori Garver Being Nominated to Lead NASA

President Obama has finally announced officially that Charlie Bolden is being nominated to serve as the next NASA Administrator. Lori Garver is being nominated as his deputy. Both posts require Senate confirmation.

Maj. Gen. Bolden (USMC, Ret.) and Ms. Garver, who served as head of the Obama transition team for NASA, long had been rumored as the choices for those posts. Both have previously served at NASA Headquarters. A Naval Academy graduate, Bolden is a four-time shuttle astronaut and a decorated marine aviator. In a video on YouTube, Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), Bolden’s chief advocate and chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Science and Space, discusses Bolden’s qualifications. Bolden and Nelson flew together on the space shuttle in 1986. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, the top Republican on the full Senate Commerce Committee, released a statement praising the nomination, as did House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon and Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee chair Gabrielle Giffords.

Garver’s career has included serving as executive director of the National Space Society, a grass roots space advocacy organization; serving as NASA’s Associate Administrator for Policy and Plans under Dan Goldin; and a space consultant. She underwent training in Russia to fly in space aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft as a “space tourist” in a much publicized “friendly competition” with singer Lance Bass, but neither was ultimately able to raise the funding required. She was a space adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and moved over to the Obama campaign after he won the Democratic nomination.