Griffin Plans Departure From NASA

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin is planning to leave office on Jan. 20 and a short list of potential candidates is starting to emerge as the incoming Obama Administration moves toward Inauguration Day 2009.

Griffin, a veteran rocket scientist who always has said he serves at the pleasure of the president, does not expect to be offered an opportunity to stay on after the inauguration.

He and all other political appointees from the Bush Administration have submitted their letters of resignation as a matter of course. All are effective Tuesday, Jan. 20. Monday, Jan. 19, is a federal holiday, so that means Friday, Jan. 16, would be Griffin's last day in his ninth-floor office at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Griffin plans to stage a "NASA Update" show on NASA TV on Jan. 16. That event likely will be his swan song with the agency. Friends and family are campaigning and petitioning for Obama to keep Griffin on board, but all indications are that a new NASA Administrator will be nominated along with a new NASA Deputy Administrator sooner rather than later.

The Government Accountability Office rated the impending retirement of NASA's shuttle orbiter fleet as one of the Top 13 issues the new president will have to deal with in short order. The administration is expected to nominate new NASA leadership before making any significant decisions regarding U.S. space policy and the future of the human spaceflight program.

A former astronaut who would be the first African-American NASA Administrator leads a list of potential candidates, according to congressional sources.

Charlie Bolden flew four times on the space shuttle, including the mission to deploy NASA's flagship Hubble Space Telescope and the historic first joint U.S.-Russian shuttle mission.

He also flew on a 1986 mission with then-congressman Bill Nelson, who now is the senior U.S. senator from the state of Florida. Nelson, whose grandparents homesteaded on land that now is part of NASA's Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center, is a native of Melbourne.

Nelson likely will be a key figure in the selection process. He oversees a key Senate committee that oversees NASA and he has been advising Obama on the future of the nation's space agency.

Nelson declined comment on the possibility of Bolden heading NASA. But his spokesman Dan McLaughlin said, "The senator views him as a top-notch individual."

Bolden did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Other potential candidates might include:

++Sally Ride, who became the first American woman to fly in space in 1983. Ride, who served on the commissions that investigated both the Challenger and Columbia accidents, wrote an editorial in support of Obama during the presidential election last year.

++Alan Stern. The prinicipal investigator of a mission to Pluton, Stern took the helm as Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters but only served a short term. He left and later criticised NASA for ongoing cost overruns in space and planetary science missions.

++Wesley Huntress. A former NASA space science chief who played a key role in the deployment of a series of vitally important planterary science mission after the 1986 Challenger accident, including the Magellan Venus Radar Mapper, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Galileo Jupiter probe.

++Scott Hubbard. Known for turning around NASA's Mars program after back-to-back failures in the late 1990s, Hubbard was a key member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. He went on to serve as an director of NASA's Ames Research Center before leaving the agency for academia.

Here's your chance to weigh in. Click on the comments link below to tell us who you think should run NASA.