NASA Adminitrator Bill Nelson pens letter to agency's next chief as Kennedy Space Center's Janet Petro becomes interim leader

Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel on Jan 21, 2025

Published in News & Features

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NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has left the building, and while President Donald Trump’s nominee awaits a confirmation hearing, the head of Kennedy Space Center will keep things afloat.

Nelson, who flew to space on board Space Shuttle Columbia while a member of the House of Representatives, later served in the U.S. Senate for Florida. He was nominated by President Joe Biden and confirmed as the agency’s 14th administrator. His likely replacement is billionaire Jared Isaacman, who flew twice to space partnering up with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Until Isaacman is confirmed, though, KSC Director Janet Petro was named interim administrator as Trump took office, becoming the first woman to ever lead the agency, even if temporarily. NASA’s Associate Administrator Jim Free was notably passed over for the role, even though he is the lead civil employee.

Just how NASA’s leadership structure may change under Isaacman’s potential confirmation remains to be seen, but Nelson in a farewell letter to whoever gets the job highlights the benefits of an agency that crosses party lines for support.

“There is a special power that space has, that NASA has, to bring together the nations of the Earth, whether we come from different parties or from different continents, we find common ground when we look to the stars for we go to space to learn the secrets of the universe, but in the process, we learn about something else, we learn about ourselves,” he wrote.

“That was something I saw when I looked back at our Earth from the window of a spacecraft as I orbited the Earth,” he continued. “I saw a beautiful, colorful, magnificent creation suspended in nothing. And when I looked back at our home, I did not see borders. I did not see racial division. I did not see religious division, and I did not see political division. I saw that we are all in this together as citizens of planet Earth.”

He urged his successor to listen and trust the people who work at NASA.

“They understand to their core how to make the impossible real in our time,” he wrote.

He said NASA’s role in the government is rare as its mission is nonpartisan and support comes from all sides of the political spectrum.

“Because NASA keeps that truth at the center of its work, I was moved by the camaraderie, respect and support we received from our allies in Congress,” he wrote. “I hope you revel in your time at NASA, when you walk the halls and the lots, the control rooms and the assembly buildings, the laboratories and the runways of this special space agency.”

He paid homage to the history of KSC while pushing NASA’s plans for the Artemis missions in the future, including the goal of returning humans to the moon for the first time since the end of the Apollo program in 1972. And referenced the tragedies that led to the deaths of astronauts such as the Apollo I, Challenger and Columbia accidents.

“When you take in that panorama, you get a view that might be one of the rarest sites on Earth,” he wrote. “You can see with unusual clarity the past and the future at the same time, and the past and the future meet right here, here at NASA and here in this room where this letter now has reached you.”

He reminded the reader of the letter that the role leading NASA is just a chapter in the agency’s story.

“I say this not to elevate the importance of the office of the administrator, but to reframe it we are merely temporary stewards of this extraordinary space agency,” he wrote. “Humanity’s dream in the stars is bigger than any of us, bigger than any one person, any one nation and any one generation.”

His said he believed the work of the agency transcends any one administration.

“We work for the pioneers who came before us and the adventurers who will come after us,” he wrote. “Our job, I believe, is to leave this space agency even better than we found it, for it is the children, the students of the Artemis generation, that will lead our world into a spectacular new future. And our job is to show them the way.”

He signed off noting as a former administrator and proud American he was rooting for his replacement.

“Your success is NASA’s success, and NASA’s success is the nation’s success. I’m at your service to help in any way what that I can,” he wrote. “Here at NASA, humanity’s capacity to discover and America’s capacity to lead shines bright. May you and the NASA team lead our world into new dazzling new dreams. May you sail on the cosmic sea to far off cosmic shores.”

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