Astronaut NASA

John Grunsfeld, an astrophysicist and astronaut who fixed the Hubble Space Telescope, continues to be chosen to lead NASA’s science mission directorate, based on several sources with expertise in the selection.

Astronaut NASA

Grunsfeld is currently deputy director in the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which operates Hubble. Although replace Ed Weiler, who resigned his post as NASA associate administrator in September.



“John is a very capable guy,” says Weiler. “He knows the two human and robotic sides. He’s a really solid citizen.”



The two have known each other for decades. They first met inside mid-1970s when, as a teenager in Chicago, Illinois, Grunsfeld attended science workshops taught by Weiler in the Adler Planetarium. Grunsfeld went on to study physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, before undertaking a PhD in high-energy astrophysics with the University of Chicago.



He became an astronaut in 1992, and ended up flying on the space shuttle more. Three of those missions would fix the Hubble telescope. This can have helped him to obtain the nomination - NASA administrator Charles Bolden is himself a former shuttle pilot, and contains shown an affinity for fellow astronauts. “Clearly, he’s Charlie’s pick,” says anyone with knowledge of the choices. NASA spokesman Trent Perrotto disapproves appointment has yet been adapted official.

Positive experience



Grunsfeld would appear to have the ideal background for the task of managing the US$5.1-billion science budget at NASA. First, he's a scientist - one of the few astronomers to have both touched Hubble and used data from this. Grunsfeld also has knowledge of NASA bureaucracy, i have worked in Washington DC advising the administrator as the agency's chief scientist from 2003 to 2004. In 2004, he was make the awkward position of having to defend then-administrator Sean O’Keefe’s decision to cancel Hubble’s final servicing mission (which has been later reinstated, and ended up going ahead in 2009).





Since leaving NASA last year, Grunsfeld has been practising his management skills, looking after the approximately 500 employees with the Space Telescope Science Institute. He even is skilled with NASA's next flagship astronomy mission: the $8-billion James Webb Space Telescope, which, after it launches following the decade, will also be managed by the Baltimore institute. Therefore, Grunsfeld has had to develop a partnership with some of Webb’s defenders on Capitol Hill, one of them Senator Barbara Mikulski (Democrat, Maryland). Just yesterday, as part of the Senate’s powerful appropriations committee, Mikulski helped to pass legislation that steers $530 million to Webb in 2012 alone.



Only one scientist familiar with the pick states that NASA-funded scientists who work outside astronomy - in Earth science, planetary science and heliophysics - could question Grunsfeld's leadership. “His entire reputation is founded on fixing space telescopes,” says the scientist. “I think it will be a real tough slog for him.”



Yet Weiler states that he himself faced similar prejudice as he began his first stint as leader of the agency’s science division in 1998, after having been Hubble’s chief scientist for quite some time. “Clearly this Hubble astronomer would do terrible things to planetary,” he says sarcastically. Ultimately, Weiler feels he did not neglect planetary science - in fact, he was one of the Mars programme’s biggest defenders. “I just ensured my decisions were determined by peer review and competition. That’s what John should do,” he says.

Astronaut NASA