Bill Nelson has resigned as NASA Administrator, ending a half-century of public service.
Nelson and NASA Deputy Administrator, Pam Melroy left the agency on Monday, the same day Donald Trump began his second term as president.
Trump has named Janet Petro, the former director of the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, as NASA’s interim administrator.
Nelson, a member of the Democratic Party, began his U.S. government career in 1972, when he was elected to the Florida House of Representatives.
Six years later, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives, representing Florida’s ninth congressional district.
The district is located to the state’s famous Space Coast, which includes both KSC and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Nelson went aboard the space shuttle Columbia’s STS-61-C mission in January 1986, becoming the first sitting member of the United States House of Representatives to reach the final frontier.
Nelson was appointed to NASA’s advisory council in 2019, and President Joe Biden nominated him as NASA administrator in February 2019. The Senate unanimously confirmed him two months later.
Nelson’s tenure as NASA chief was an eventful one, featuring the launch of the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope, the Europa Clipper probe, the DART asteroid-smashing spacecraft and the Artemis 1 moon mission, among other high-profile efforts.
Artemis 1, as its name suggests, was the first mission in the Artemis program of moon exploration, which began during the first Trump presidency.
In another X post on Monday, Nelson offered some words of advice to Isaacman — or whoever gets the job, if the Senate doesn’t confirm Trump’s first choice.
He said “We are merely temporary stewards of this extraordinary space agency. Humanity’s dream in the stars is bigger than any of us — bigger than any one person, any one nation, and any one generation,” Nelson wrote in a two-page “letter to the next NASA administrator.”
“As a former administrator, as a proud American, I am rooting for you,” he added. “Your success is NASA’s success, and NASA’s success is the nation’s success. I am at your service to help in any way that I can.”
