In recognition of National Teacher Appreciation Week, I want to encourage everyone to thank a teacher today for the extraordinary daily sacrifices and contributions they make to prepare our young people for lives of purpose and meaning. Great teachers have played an especially big part in my own life. My mother, father, mother-in-law, and father-in-law were all teachers. Whenever I am asked what led me to pursue a career as a Marine, an astronaut, and to accept the President’s appointment as Administrator of NASA, I think back to my days growing up in the segregated schools of Columbia, South Carolina. In addition to the compassionate, loving guidance of my parents, I will never forget the lessons instilled in me by my teachers at Columbia’s Carver Elementary, W.A. Perry Middle School, and C.A. Johnson High School. They not only taught me the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, they taught me the hard facts of life and impressed upon me that no matter the odds, I should stay in school and follow my dreams. I took that advice to heart and it has given me the strength to break barriers and achieve goals that were unthinkable for a southern born African American 60 years ago.

One of the things I like most about my job at NASA is the opportunity I get to meet with the growing numbers of teachers and students who are interested in science, technology, engineering and math, especially as these subjects relate to the exploration of space. Through NASA’s educational outreach and partnerships with students and schools, we are committed to inspiring the next generation of scientists and explorers who will ensure America’s continued leadership in technology, innovation and space. It all begins in the classroom with a great teacher. Take a moment today to thank a teacher who made a difference in your life.

NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Director, Robert Cabana, and Senator Bill Nelson were on hand today for an announcement by Colorado-based Sierra Nevada Corporation of its interest in expanding the company’s space operations on Florida’s Space Coast.  The development serves as a reminder that the Space Coast is open for business and ready for a new era in space exploration. 

Mark Sirangelo, Vice President of Sierra Nevada Space Systems, made the announcement today with state of Florida officials and the state’s aerospace economic development agency, Space Florida.  This is great news for the Space Coast, which continues to be a critical focal point in our nation’s leadership in space exploration.  It’s another major step forward in the bipartisan plan crafted by the President and Congress to transition transport of cargo and crew to the International Space Station (ISS) to private industry partners, so that NASA can focus on deep space exploration.  The President’s plan puts us on track to have American companies transporting astronauts to the ISS by 2017, ending the outsourcing of this work and creating good-paying American jobs.

Sierra Nevada is among the companies that have signed Space Act Agreements with NASA in our Commercial Crew Development Program.  The company is developing its Dream Chaser spacecraft that is being designed to launch from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) with the capability to safely transport astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station and land them safely back on Earth. 

Last July, I was pleased to attend the signing of a Space Act Agreement with Sierra Nevada to involve KSC’s skilled workforce in launch preparations and post-landing activities for Dream Chaser.  As Sierra Nevada follows through on moving more of its work to the Space Coast, it will be a boost to our efforts to bolster the local economy.

NASA has already taken steps to do just that.  In fact, our Commercial Crew Program is headquartered at KSC and all the prospective companies involved are making substantial progress toward achieving crewed spaceflight.

The most exciting sign of thriving space activity on the Space Coast is the pending SpaceX launch to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral in the coming days.  Last year, NASA signed an agreement with Space Florida to lease KSC’s Orbiter Processing Facility(OPF) -3 to Boeing to manufacture and test the company’s Crew Space Transportation (CST-100) spacecraft.  In addition, workers at KSC are involved in preparing NASA’s new Space Launch System and Orion crew vehicle that will take our astronauts farther into the solar system than we have ever been – to an asteroid and eventually Mars.  Building on the demonstrated capabilities and legacy of Florida’s Space Coast, President Obama’s 2013 budget includes a multi-million dollar investment to modernize and transform the launch infrastructure at KSC to benefit current and future users.

The thousands of Floridians who have contributed to the success of the American space program have much of which to be proud – for past achievements and those yet to come.   Today’s announcement is one more reminder of the importance of the Florida Space Coast and its workforce – and the potential that lies ahead.

This morning, the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit, non-partisan organization, released rankings from the Federal Leadership Challenge, and I’m delighted to report that NASA scored very well. We do big, amazing things at NASA, but it’s our outstanding people that make it all possible.

These rankings are drawn from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management's Employee Viewpoint Survey of more than 150,000 executive branch employees. I want to thank NASA employees for sharing their experience with OPM. This benchmark lets us – the managers, supervisors and senior leadership of NASA – know how we are doing.

I am pleased that we rank near the top of the list, but there is always room for improvement – and I will continue to work to make NASA one of the best places to work in the government.

We have a clear, defined mission, and strong support from the country to accomplish our goals. What we do at NASA captures the imagination of the nation, and impacts lives every day. Our future is bright because of the ingenuity and know-how of the best workforce in the federal government.

By Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator and John Holdren, Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy

In his gloomy Washington Post commentary today on yesterday’s ceremony transferring ownership of the Space Shuttle Discovery from NASA to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, Charles Krauthammer urged readers to think of that transfer as the funeral for U.S. leadership in space. Nothing could be further from the truth. The United States remains far and away the world leader in space technology and exploration. As long as appropriate support continues to be forthcoming from Congress, this will remain the case indefinitely.

Krauthammer suggests that if China succeeds in putting astronauts on the Moon by 2025, as that country plans, they will have “overtaken” the United States. How absurd! Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon in 1969. How does China managing this feat fifty-six years later, if this happens, amount to “overtaking” us? Obviously, the United States could repeat its lunar feats of the 1960s and 1970s if that were the next most important thing to do in space exploration for the money. But it isn’t! We may well return to the lunar surface again as one of many destinations in the future, but for now, our immediate, more scientifically rewarding goals include sending astronauts to an asteroid in the 2020s, and Mars in the mid-2030s. They bring scientific and technological challenges worthy of a great nation and a true world leader.

Krauthammer doesn’t even mention the International Space Station. The United States led the planning, design, and construction of this $53 billion marvel – an orbiting science and technology-development laboratory that has been continuously manned since 2000. Under the previous administration’s plan, it was underfunded after 2016, implying intent to abandon it long before its scientific and engineering potential had been realized. Under the new bipartisan space-exploration plans worked out between the Obama Administration and the Congress, we will continue to operate the Space Station until at least 2020 and perhaps beyond.

In robotic space exploration, too, nobody else comes close. At this very moment, a stream of data is flowing to us from missions orbiting the Sun, Mercury, the Moon, the asteroid Vesta, Mars, and Saturn. We now have missions on the way to Jupiter, Pluto and Mars. The Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra, and Fermi space telescopes continue to make groundbreaking discoveries on an almost daily basis. We’re on track in the construction of the James Webb Space Telescope, the most sophisticated science telescope ever constructed to help us reveal the mysteries of the cosmos in ways never before possible. Last year, the MESSENGER spacecraft became the first-ever to enter orbit around Mercury. And shortly thereafter, the Ebb and Flow satellites began orbiting and mapping the gravity field of the Moon.

We are ahead in looking downward from space as well as in looking outward. Sixteen Earth-science missions currently in orbit study the Earth as an integrated system. In 2011, Aquarius SAC-D produced the first global view of ocean surface salinity and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite began making observations of Earth’s weather and climate. No other country can match our capabilities in Earth observation from space.

Declining to remind readers that it was President Bush, not President Obama who ended the shuttle program (President Obama actually added 2 flights), Krauthammer carps about the Bush Administration’s successor to the Space Shuttle having been cancelled in this Administration, but the Bush “Constellation” program as designed was behind schedule and over budget – “unexecutable” in the words of the independent blue-ribbon commission set up by the Obama Administration to review our options. In cancelling Constellation per se, we have kept the parts of it that made sense. A new heavy-lift rocket and multi-purpose crew vehicle developed out of the Constellation program will be instrumental in carrying U.S. astronauts to an asteroid, to other deep-space destinations, and ultimately to Mars.

When Krauthammer complains about the expanded role for the private sector in carrying U.S. astronauts and cargo to the Space Station, as foreseen in the current bipartisan plan and as is progressing well in practice, he seems unaware that every U.S. launch vehicle and space capsule in history – including the Space Shuttle – has been built by private corporations. That is continuing, but on a more competitive basis. Indeed, in the same week as Discovery’s transfer to the Smithsonian, NASA gave the green light to a commercial company, SpaceX, for a planned April 30 launch from Kennedy Space Center, with a berthing at the ISS a few days later. Later this year, Orbital Sciences will launch their Cygnus module and Antares launch vehicle from Wallops Island, Virginia. In FY 2013, NASA plans for at least three flights delivering research and logistics hardware to the ISS by U.S.-developed cargo delivery systems.

It should also be noted that NASA’s focus on new space technologies is seeding innovation, supporting economic vitality and helping create new jobs and expanded opportunities for a skilled workforce.

We understand that in this election year, there are some who will go out of their way to paint a pessimistic view of the country in order to score political points. But, we believe that America’s technological advancement and continued leadership in space exploration is too important to fall prey to political distortions.

Our Shuttle program was an historic achievement, but an even brighter future is on the horizon. Make no mistake about it - the future in space is happening right now, and it is being built right here in America.

This post was updated on 4/4/12.

On Sunday, 60 Minutes aired a story that captured some of what the space shuttle era meant to Florida’s Space Coast. Unfortunately, the piece also missed an awful lot of important context about the end of that era and where we’re headed from here.

As a former shuttle astronaut and the Administrator of NASA, nobody has higher regard for the incredible men and women who worked on the Space Shuttle Program. And I certainly understand that for some of those men and women, this transitional period will not be easy.

But before we get to what we’re doing, it is important to remember the context of how we came to our current circumstances. After the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy, the previous Administration decided in 2004 to end the Space Shuttle Program by 2010. President Obama decided to add two space shuttle missions to the program’s life, prolonging its retirement into 2011 and found a way to keep the International Space Station operating much longer into the future. This will allow for productive utilization of the ISS.

To get the best options on the table for the next era of American space exploration, the President convened an independent commission of experts. The committee found that the previous Administration's plan for exploration in the post-shuttle era was not viable under any feasible budget scenario. It was behind schedule, over budget, would have removed funding from the space station program in 2016 after its construction was completed, and would have widened the gap in time we relied on foreign countries for our human launch capabilities.

President Obama took a hard look at the facts and put in place our current plan, laid out in a speech at Kennedy Space Center in April 2010. This plan is a fundamental new kind of partnership in U.S. space exploration that leverages the innovation and adaptability of the American private sector for access to the ISS, allowing NASA to focus on deep space exploration and technological advances.

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is headquartered at the Kennedy Space Center and the prospective companies involved are making substantial progress toward achieving crewed spaceflight.

The first four of these firms participating in our Commercial Crew Development Program (CCDev) have already completed over 60 percent of the milestones on their spacecraft designs during the earlier phases of the CCDev now nearing completion.

One of the companies, SpaceX, has made significant financial investment in its commercial cargo and crew systems, a significant commitment to this emerging industry.

Late last year, Boeing announced an agreement with NASA and the State of Florida to lease one of the space shuttle processing facilities at Kennedy to manufacture and assemble its next-generation space capsule, creating hundreds of jobs in the process.

In 2012, we will see the first commercial cargo flights to the ISS, and with Congressional approval of the funding requested by President Obama in our FY2013 budget request, we are on track to have American companies transporting our astronauts to the station sooner than would likely have happened under the previous Administration’s plan – ending the outsourcing of this work while creating U.S. jobs now.

NASA last year selected the design for the most powerful rocket ever to be built – the Space Launch System – that will eventually carry U.S. astronauts and crucial cargo into deep space. This new deep space rocket will be processed, stacked and launched at the Kennedy, supporting thousands of jobs in the Space Coast.

The next-generation deep space capsule, Orion, is a Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle to ferry astronauts beyond the Earth’s orbit to an asteroid, Mars and other destinations and will undergo final construction, integration and eventual launch at Kennedy. The entry flight test vehicle will arrive at Kennedy in June to begin processing towards its 2014 test flight, which will test the heat shield system for the high speed reentries from beyond low Earth orbit.

We are also committed to revamping America’s space infrastructure on the ground and recognize Florida’s unrivaled importance to our nation’s activities in space, both its legacy and its future. That’s why the President’s budget includes investing in NASA’s 21st Century Space Launch Complex, a multi-million dollar effort to modernize and transform the launch infrastructure at Kennedy to benefit current and future users.

With all of these elements now in place, and with the help of the Congress, we are confidently moving forward as quickly as possible with the next great phase of America’s human expansion into the solar system.

As the President has said, this Administration will not rest until every American who wants a job can find one. Encouragingly, we’re making some real progress. Just last week it was reported that Brevard County added nearly 2,300 jobs in February. Unemployment in the county was down for the 6th straight month, and as Florida Today reported, it’s “the lowest rate on the Space Coast since May 2009.”

Certainly we know much work remains. But the men and women of NASA, the Space Coast and the country should know that the President and I wake up every day thinking about ways to create jobs, grow the economy and continue America’s global leadership in the 21st century.

Last night, NASA was again a part of exploration history. But this time, it was a mission below, not above the Earth. Kevin Hand, a NASA astrobiologist from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), was a member of the team that supported acclaimed filmmaker James Cameron (Avatar, Titanic) in the first successful human solo mission to the deepest part of Earth’s ocean, Challenger Deep, in the middle of the Pacific. Kevin, who was among a small group of expedition members to greet Cameron when he emerged from his 6.8 mile excursion under the sea, will analyze samples the filmmaker brought back to see what they might tell us about the possibility of life under the ocean of Jupiter’s moon, Europa. The Earth’s deep ocean environment provides the closest analog to conditions expected for the Europa ocean, which NASA’s Galileo spacecraft first discovered in 2003.

Cameron, who had worked and dove with Kevin as part of Cameron’s earlier Aliens of the Deep IMAX, asked the astrobiologist to join him on this expedition and invited him to analyze the samples he brought back.

Cameron made his historic ocean descent in a specially designed submarine he calls the Deepsea Challenger. The 2.5 story sub descended to the Challenger Deep in 2 hours and 36 minutes. After several hours exploring this never-before seen part of the ocean sea-floor, Cameron made a roughly 70-minute trip back to the surface. Kevin, who serves as JPL’s Deputy Chief Scientist for Solar System Exploration, is eager to analyze both the water and sediment samples, and subjecting them to temperatures and radiation levels known to exist on the surface of Europa.

While Cameron and his expedition partner, the National Geographic Society, are most interested in what his Deepsea Challenger expedition will tell us about life in the deepest part of the Earth, JPL’s Kevin Hand will bring NASA closer to unraveling the mystery about the possibility of life in one of the farthest points in our solar system.

Congratulations to James Cameron and Kevin Hand for this amazing exploratory achievement.

Today, I am in Atlanta on the campus of Georgia Tech for a “Day of Engineering” Facebook pep rally to kick off the President’s new STAY WITH IT campaign devoted to recruiting, retaining and graduating 10,000 engineers each year to maintain America’s competitive edge. Corporate leaders, educators and students have gathered for dialogue and panel discussions on the dire need to increase the number of American engineers. Fourteen universities from across the nation are participating via Facebook viewing parties. Spearheaded by Intel President & CEO, Paul Otellini, who is also a member of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, the STAY WITH IT campaign will provide mentors and other supports to increase the number of American engineering graduates which has fallen woefully behind other surging economies and has led to a shortage of skilled workers for American jobs.

More than 65 companies have already committed to doubling their 2012 summer engineering internships, including Intel, GE and DuPont – making an overall $70 million investment in giving students valuable hands-on experience. In addition, engineering deans from some of the nation’s top universities – including Georgia Tech – have developed a gold seal standard of excellence for colleges and universities focused on improved retention and graduation rates.

The participation of NASA and Intel is particularly important because aerospace and computer technology are clearly the growth industries of the future; but the only way to ensure that growth is by maintaining a constant pipeline of qualified workers. The centerpiece of our efforts to overcome close the skills gap is the engagement of more students in the study of science, technology, engineering and math or the STEM disciplines.

NASA is now embarking on ambitious agenda of deep space exploration that will carry our astronauts to places where we have never been, including an asteroid and eventually Mars. We need engineers to help us design the new rockets and capsules that will carry us there. We need scientists and researchers to help us develop materials to withstand the stresses of deep space exploration, to sustain humans for long-duration stays in space, to make air transportation quicker, safer and more efficient and to aid us in our quest to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos and improve life here on Earth.

My message to the students participating in Georgia Tech’s Day of Engineering was simple: Stay With It! Stay with your studies. Stay with your research. Stay with your dreams as you prepare to take your rightful place as the next great generation of American engineers, innovators and leaders.