WASHINGTON -
Despite a last-ditch campaign by some supporters to keep NASA Administrator
Mike Griffin on the job, the transition team of President-elect Barack Obama is
now vetting a handful of replacement candidates, among them scientist Charles
Kennel, who previously ran the agency's Earth science division, according to
sources familiar with the situation.
A decision
is expected next week, possibly sooner, and sources with ties to Obama's NASA
transition team said Griffin is not
expected to be retained.
Griffin,
for his part, said he submitted his letter of resignation in December, along
with all political appointees of the outgoing administration of President
George W. Bush. In a Jan. 8 e-mail, Griffin said he had not yet been asked to
stay.
"There's no
discussion unless the new team wants to have one. In the case of NASA, it is
hard to imagine that the president-elect has time to deal with succession
anytime prior to [Jan. 20], so in all likelihood the clock ticks over and I am
gone," he said.
Nick
Shapiro, spokesman for the Obama transition team, declined to comment.
Griffin had
said in recent weeks that he would like to stay on to finish work he had
started on building NASA's
next generation of vehicles aimed at sending humans to the Moon and beyond.
A petition drive to
keep Griffin, launched by former NASA astronaut Scott "Doc" Horowitz and
circulated to friends and colleagues by Griffin's wife, Rebecca, left Griffin
both honored and embarrassed, he said Jan. 8 in a speech at the Space
Transportation Association breakfast on Capitol Hill.
Some
members of Congress, including Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), chairman of the
House Science and Technology Committee with NASA oversight, and the committee's
ranking member, Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas), had recommended keeping Griffin in
his post, at least through inauguration.
"He's been
really a staunch advocate for NASA - the agency, scientists, engineers and
administrative staff. He's given them and our nation, I think, a sense of
pride," Hall said in introducing Griffin during the Jan. 8 breakfast.
Sources
close to the NASA transition effort, meanwhile, said Obama intends to name a
new NASA administrator before Inauguration Day and possibly as soon as Friday.
They said Obama's overall transition team leader, John Podesta, and his
colleagues have been formally vetting NASA administrator candidates this week.
One previously unreported candidate getting a close look, these sources said,
is Kennel, a former NASA associate administrator for Earth science and a recent
director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of
California San Diego.
Another
source with ties to the NASA
transition team said the Obama administration would like to pick a
distinguished scientist to lead NASA, noting that Obama already has tapped
Harvard University physicist John Holdren as his science adviser and Nobel
laureate physicist Steven Chu to run the U.S. Department of Energy.
If the
Obama administration is determined to put a scientist at NASA's helm, that
would disqualify retired U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Charles Bolden, a former
space shuttle commander. Space News identified Bolden in November as a
potential NASA administrator candidate and he has been the subject of fervent
press speculation in recent days.
The source
who identified Kennel as a serious contender for NASA's top job cautioned that
the Obama transition team, at least as of Thursday, had not settled on a
candidate. The source said Podesta and his colleagues were vetting names
submitted by Obama's NASA transition team as well as some names of their own.
The source said it was possible that when Podesta goes to Obama with a
recommendation, the president-elect "may have a name or two" to enter into the
mix. Two sources said the Obama transition team has also reached out to Capitol
Hill for input.
Kennel
currently chairs the National Academy of Science's Space Studies Board, which
keeps a close eye on NASA programs and policies. He also served on the NASA
Advisory Council from 1998 to 2006, serving as the council's chair from 2001 to
2005. In the mid-1990s, Kennel ran NASA's Mission to Planet Earth enterprise,
the predecessor to the agency's $1.3 billion Earth science division.
Last year,
Kennel joined a group of former high-ranking U.S. government officials in
calling for merging the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the
U.S. Geological Survey into an independent Earth Systems Science Agency to
improve the study of the Earth's changing environment. That proposal envisioned
leaving NASA's Earth science programs intact and in place.
In addition
to Kennel, candidates said by sources to still be in the running include: Alan
Stern, former NASA associate administrator for science; Scott Hubbard,
former director of NASA's Ames Research Center; and Wesley Huntress, former
NASA associate administrator for space science.
Bolden also
is getting a closer look, sources said, if only because of the recent media
attention he has received.
Bolden said
during a Jan. 6 webcast organized by the Conrad Foundation that he had not been
approached by the Obama administration.
"I'm
incredibly honored that my name would be floated around, but those are things I
haven't been approached about yet so I can't offer you an opinion or anything,"
Bolden said.
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