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On May 23 the former deputy administrator of NASA was nominated for the job by President Obama. Assuming the Senate confirms his nomination, he is set to become the first African-American to head NASA.
"Charlie Bolden is well known to everybody in the space community from the human spaceflight side of the house, where he's had extensive shuttle experience, to the science people he worked with as he was part of the crew that launched the Hubble telescope," says John Logsdon, professor emeritus at the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.
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This nomination comes at a crossroads time for he United States and NASA. While we retire the shuttle fleet next year and wait for the new Constellation and Orion vehicles to be finished for their 2015 launch, the Russians are looking to get their space swagger back.
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If humanity is going to continue to survive and thrive, we have to step off this planet, explore the solar system and the stars and eventually colonize them. This nominee will have the responsibility of charting NASA's space course for the next twenty years and beyond.