The director of the Hayden Planetarium and a former NASA space science administrator were tapped to head up The Planetary Society, the organization said Wednesday.

Bruce Murray, co-founder of the Society and its president since 1997, will become chairman of the organization's Board of Directors.

Louis Friedman will continue in his position as executive director of The Planetary Society and as an officer on its Board of Directors.

"Both Wes and Neil are professionally identified with the popularization of space exploration and are committed to the vision of The Planetary Society," Murray said in a prepared statement. "They insure a bright future for the Society as we make our transition from founders of the organization to successors."

The Planetary Society's mission is to inspire the people of Earth through education, research and public participation to explore other worlds and seek extraterrestrial life. Dedicated to the peaceful, international exploration of space, the Society's new officers intend to lead the organization forward into a new era of wonder and discovery throughout the solar system.

"I'm enthusiastic to take over as president of The Planetary Society at a time when our message of peace and hope for the future is more relevant than ever," Huntress said.

Lately, the Planetary Society has coordinated an effort to launch a spacecraft the rides the solar wind.

Huntress, who has served as vice-president of the Society since 2000, is elected president of the Board for a five-year term. Tyson, a member of the Board of Directors since 1997, is elected for a three-year term as vice-president.

Huntress is director of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, D.C. As the associate administrator for Space Sciences at NASA until 1998, he was a key architect of the revitalization of the planetary exploration program and of NASA's new Origins program.

Some of the planetary programs that Huntress initiated while at NASA headquarters include the Mars Pathfinder mission, the Mars Surveyor Program for long-term exploration of Mars, the Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission, and the Discovery program of low-cost planetary missions.

Huntress worked for 20 years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) as an astrochemist before coming to NASA headquarters. While at JPL, Huntress was an investigator on the Giotto mission to Halley's comet and was the pre-project scientist for the Cassini mission, currently en route to Saturn.

Tyson is a visiting research scientist in astrophysics at Princeton University. Tyson was the project scientist for the reconstruction of the Hayden Planetarium, which was re-built as part of the Rose Center for Earth and Space.

Tyson's professional research interests include star formation, exploding stars and the chemical evolution of the Milky Way.

He writes a monthly column on the universe for Natural History magazine. His recent books include a memoir, The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist, and the co-authored One Universe: At Home in the Cosmos, which won the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award for 2001.

Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman founded The Planetary Society in 1980 to advance the exploration of the solar system and to continue the search for extraterrestrial life. With 100,000 members in over 140 countries, the Society is the largest space interest group in the world.