On Monday, NASA turns 60. For more than 20 of those, Charles Bolden has been a major part of the space agency.
From 1980 to 1994, he was an astronaut on four space shuttle missions: Two as pilot and two as commander. Then, he led the agency from 2009 to 2017, serving as NASA Administrator during the Obama Administration.
“For me, it’s a tremendous birthday to be celebrating, sixty years,” he tells CNBC’s On The Money in a recent interview. “Six decades of NASA being the organization that serves the nation in four areas, human space flight, science, aeronautics and technology.”
While Bolden was NASA Administrator, a stated goal was to land humans on Mars by the mid-2030’s. He told CNBC that the space agency appears ” on target to do that.”
But now, a return trip of astronauts to the Moon will come before any human arrival on Mars. A number of space experts think a new lunar mission could prove instructive before making a journey to the red planet.
Bolden explained that the Trump Administration and current NASA leadership has “taken on the challenge of trying to put humans back on the surface on the moon which I think is important. It’s not essential to putting humans on Mars, but I think it would be a very big step as long as we do it in the right way.”
That way, he added, the government can “capitalize on the development of the commercial space sector as well as our international partners to help us get humans back on the surface of the Moon, while NASA leads the way with our international partners and entrepreneurs in getting humans to Mars.”