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Bush Nominates Griffin for NASA's Head Post

Posted on: Saturday, 12 March 2005, 12:00 CST

WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Friday nominated Michael D. Griffin, a physicist and engineer who is a strong advocate of human space flight, to lead the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as it tries to revive the shuttle program and return humans to the moon.

Griffin, who is head of the Space Department at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., has held numerous posts in the aerospace industry and was president and chief operating officer of In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit organization sponsored by the CIA to invest in companies developing technology with application to national security. He also served as the deputy for technology of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, working on missile defense systems from 1986-91.

If confirmed as administrator by the Senate, Griffin faces a critical period at NASA, which is trying to recover from the Columbia disaster two years ago and to relaunch the shuttle program in May. An independent panel found that a "broken safety culture" was as big a cause of the accident, which killed seven astronauts, as the piece of falling foam that put a hole into Columbia's left wing.

Griffin would also be charged with carrying out Bush's new vision of space exploration, which focuses on sending humans back to the moon and later on to Mars.

Griffin, 55, served at NASA during the 1990s, where he was chief engineer and the associate administrator for exploration. He is to replace Sean O'Keefe, who left the post last month after three years to become chancellor of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

Challenges the new administrator must face include overseeing the resumption of shuttle flights as early as May 15, completion of the space station, re-evaluating O'Keefe's controversial decision not to send a shuttle to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, and selling Congress and the public on NASA's new direction in exploration.

Griffin's selection was greeted with bipartisan support and optimism on Capitol Hill. "Dr. Griffin will propel NASA into the next phase of America's mission in space," House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said in a statement. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., ranking Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees NASA, said of Griffin: "He has the right combination of experience in industry, academia and government service. He has a proven record of leadership and a passion for science and exploration."

Source: Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

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