Four-time astronaut Charles Bolden resigned as NASA administrator on January 20, 2017, leaving the space agency after more than seven years on the job. Since then, a former director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, Robert Lightfoot, has served as interim director. He has held this post now for 315 days, or nearly 11 months.

According to an analysis of the gaps between administrators at the space agency, NASA has never gone this long without a formal administrator. Beginning with T. Keith Glennan in 1958 and running through the term of Charles Bolden six decades later, there have been ten transitions between NASA administrators. The average gap between administrators has been 3.7 months.

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There are two past analogs for the current situation, when an administrator for the president of one political party resigned on the day a new president from the other party took office. This occurred in 1981, when Robert Frosch resigned upon President Carter’s departure, and again in 2009, when Michael Griffin resigned upon George W. Bush’s departure. In each case, the gap between resignation and Senate approval of a new administrator was less than six months, 170 and 176 days, respectively.

Bridenstine

The Trump administration nominated pilot and Congressman Jim Bridenstine to become NASA’s administrator three months ago, so it does not deserve all of the blame for a lack of formal leadership at the space agency. Congress finally held a confirmation hearing for Bridenstine on November 1, during which he faced strong criticism from Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.).

“Your recent public service career does not instill great confidence about your leadership skills or ability to bring people together,” Nelson said, asserting that a political figure should not lead an apolitical agency such as NASA. “In fact, your record and behavior in Congress is as divisive and extreme as any in Washington.”


(These "too political" criticisms raised some eyebrows in the aerospace community, considering that Nelson used his political position as a US representative to ride aboard the space shuttle in 1986 for a six-day mission. As a lawyer, he had no special skills pertinent to the mission, which had a primary objective of deploying a communications satellite.)

Although it is true that Bridenstine has strong political positions, he also has experience as a fighter pilot and, during his tenure in Congress, has been among the most active members on spaceflight issues. Opponents have also questioned Bridenstine’s views on climate change, which in the past have included doubt about humanity’s effect on a warming world. During his confirmation hearing, Bridenstine said he believes humans are contributing to climate change.

In recent weeks, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has emerged as a key figure in the Senate on Bridenstine, having also expressed reservations to his nomination. However, there remains a general expectation that Bridenstine will be approved along a mostly party line vote later this month.

Need for leadership

While Lightfoot has received praise for his steady hand at NASA this year, several people told Ars that having a formal administrator is important to advance the agency’s mission. As the new National Space Council deliberates NASA’s future, the agency needs someone to speak for its workers and their capabilities.

“The risk is that NASA is left out of the mix for budget increases and major White House cross-agency initiatives,” said Lori Garver, who served as deputy administrator at NASA from 2009 to 2013. “Early political leadership at an agency like NASA is critical to shaping the priorities and budgets for the entire term of the president.”


For example, after Bolden and Garver were confirmed in July, 2009, the NASA leadership had already established a commission led by former Lockheed Martin Chairman Norm Augustine to contemplate the future of the agency. It had also begun to make major shifts in the 2011 budget.

A figure at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during that time, Phil Larson said NASA needs direction as it faces critical questions about its future exploration plans. “Think about what decisions could have been made with a leader in place over the last year,” he said, “and what the upside of those decisions would be.”

Since Bolden left, NASA has been grappling with trying to find a destination for its human exploration program. The agency has begun to de-emphasize a “Journey to Mars” as the Trump administration has said it would prefer to send humans to the Moon first. There are momentous decisions to be made about how to get people and materials to the Moon, how much to involve the burgeoning commercial space program, and how to pay for all of this.


In the interim, some of the leadership gap could be filled by the space council, led by Vice President Mike Pence. “It is far from optimum and not what the Vice President wants to do, but he could provide marching orders to NASA,” said John Logsdon, a noted space historian. “Robert Lightfoot is perfectly capable of implementing them. But that is not really the Space Council’s job. The Senate has a nominee before it. He should be voted up or down so that NASA can have a leader linked to the current administration.”