Enlarge/ NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine testifies before a US Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee on September 30, 2020.
Nicholas Kamm-Pool/Getty Images
The first thing to know about James Frederick Bridenstine, who has served as NASA’s administrator for a little more than 30 months, is that he was not staying on as the space agency’s leader regardless of the presidential election results.
Not that he wants out of the job. Bridenstine has relished the challenge of leading NASA through troubling times and overcoming initial concerns about his partisanship to lead NASA—all of NASA—through the turbulent years of the Trump administration. Nor is it because he has failed. Bridenstine has largely succeeded in pushing the agency forward and will leave it better than he found it.
But the reality is that a Democratic president was never going to keep Bridenstine, who has a political rather than a technical background, on as administrator. And he knew this. He said as much this week, telling Aviation Week that a new president would probably want someone else, someone fully trusted. After all, he had previously introduced legislation to remove Earth science from NASA’s mission statement, and he criticized same-sex marriages. Bridenstine will resign his position on January 20.
However, he would not have come back for a second Trump administration, either. During his tenure as NASA administrator, which began in April of 2018, Bridenstine embraced climate science and supported Earth science missions. Moreover, the president’s advisers wanted Bridenstine to bash his predecessors more, to contrast the “success” of the Trump space program with the “failure” of President Obama’s. But Bridenstine more or less held the line, crediting his predecessors for creating and funding the commercial crew program that led to SpaceX’s dramatic crewed flight in May.
“He has been a NASA administrator, not a Trump representative at NASA,” said John Logsdon, a historian who has known all of the agency’s administrators since its inception in 1958.
Multiple sources have confirmed that Bridenstine would have stepped down or been moved aside had Trump been reelected. He had legitimate family reasons for doing so—the 45-year-old has a young and growing family and a desire to spend more time with them in Oklahoma. But there were also clear signals that a second Trump administration would have turned the apolitical NASA into a more political agency.
For example, within the coming months, the agency planned to hold an elaborate ceremony to formally rename the NASA Headquarters after “Hidden Figure” Mary Jackson. The event was to feature Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter. Along these lines, NASA would get a new leader as well—not so much a NASA administrator, but a Trump representative at the space agency.
Assessing his tenure
In an interview, Logsdon said he rated Bridenstine’s term at NASA a success. “I think he’s exceeded anyone’s expectations in the position,” the historian and expert in presidential space politics said.
Logsdon cited two primary successes. One, he said, is that Bridenstine stabilized the agency’s programs. In particular, with the Artemis Program, Bridenstine has built bipartisan support for a plan to send humans back to the Moon and eventually on to Mars. He has also engendered support within much of the industry for this idea and began to bring international partners on board with important commitments.
Bridenstine also did this while managing perceptions that Artemis was a “political” program, with a convenient target date of 2024 for landing humans on the Moon—what would have been the final year of a second Trump term. Logsdon said he believes it is reasonable to expect that Artemis will continue in some form under President-elect Joe Biden’s administration, although the first Moon landing is unlikely before the second half of the 2020s.
Logsdon also credited Bridenstine with recognizing the changing times in space—commercial companies, led by SpaceX, are contributing more private money and ideas to exploration—and embraced them. “He’s led the transition from old NASA to new NASA, in particular with the emphasis on public-private partnerships, and the engagement of the US private sector, more strongly than any of his predecessors.”
Bridenstine has not been perfect, of course. Areas outside of human exploration within the agency have at times felt largely ignored by Bridenstine. Some in the astronaut office, too, have felt politicized by their appearances at the White House and other events for the benefit of the Trump administration. Bridenstine also had help: a supportive vice president in Mike Pence and a National Space Council led by Scott Pace. But Bridenstine was the public face of NASA, leading the charge.
Public excitement
There can be little doubt that Bridenstine and his team have sought to improve NASA and put it on a sustainable course.
“He came into the conversation having just rolled out the American Space Renaissance Act, which was a huge collection of thoughts on space policy,” said Anthony Colangelo, founder of the Main Engine Cutoff Podcast. “It generally sounded like a collation of all the ideas that space enthusiasts had been discussing and debating and circling around for the past few years. To see those forward-looking policy ideas thrown into the Congressional mix really got people excited.”
Bridenstine’s genuine enthusiasm for space also helped win over space fans and observers like Colangelo. Bridenstine would talk about these topics with the same passion as fans. He drank Mountain Dew at congressional hearings. “He sounded like he could have been right alongside us talking and arguing about space issues on Twitter or Reddit or NASASpaceflight forums or on your favorite podcast,” Colangelo said.
Among people who already care about space, this enthusiasm was infectious. The real question is whether this desire for exploration beyond low-Earth orbit can be extended beyond the space community. The best test of this is whether Congress ultimately funds the Artemis Program. NASA sought more than $3 billion for a Human Landing System in the fiscal year 2021 budget, but it now looks like Congress will provide $600 million to $1 billion. Although this is considerably less, it might still be seen as a baseline commitment to funding the lunar program, albeit on a slower timeline.
Ultimately, Jim Bridenstine’s legacy will probably depend on whether such funding proves transitory or ultimately does in fact lead to the first woman and the next man landing on the Moon in NASA spacesuits.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
