{"id":15614,"date":"2016-04-06T00:57:58","date_gmt":"2016-04-05T16:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/hubble-hugger-and-chief-of-nasa-science-division-to-leave-agency\/"},"modified":"2016-04-06T00:57:58","modified_gmt":"2016-04-05T16:57:58","slug":"hubble-hugger-and-chief-of-nasa-science-division-to-leave-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/hubble-hugger-and-chief-of-nasa-science-division-to-leave-agency\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Hubble Hugger\u2019 and chief of NASA science division to leave agency"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"John
John Grunsfeld is seen inside the shuttle Atlantis\u2019 airlock preparing for a spacewalk during a 2009 visit to the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Veteran astronaut John Grunsfeld, who flew five space shuttle missions before becoming the head of NASA\u2019s science mission directorate in 2012, announced Tuesday he will leave the space agency April 30.<\/p>\n

Grunsfeld\u2019s retirement wraps up a 24-year career at NASA since his selection as a member of the agency\u2019s 1992 astronaut class. The Chicago native flew on five space shuttle missions, including three flights to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.<\/p>\n

A self-described \u201cHubble Hugger,\u201d Grunsfeld was an astronomer and physicist before joining the NASA astronaut corps.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn leaves an extraordinary legacy of success that will forever remain a part of our nation\u2019s historic science and exploration achievements,\u201d said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden. \u201cWidely known as the \u2018Hubble Repairman,\u2019 it was an honor to serve with him in the astronaut corps and watch him lead NASA\u2019s science portfolio during a time of remarkable discovery. These are discoveries that have rewritten science textbooks and inspired the next generation of space explorers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grunsfeld is the only astronaut to visit Hubble in orbit three times, helping him earn the Hubble Hugger monicker. On his first visit to the telescope aboard the shuttle Discovery over the Christmas holiday in 1999, two teams of spacewalkers returned the observatory to service after four of its pointing mechanisms failed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt that was an incredible gift to everybody on planet Earth, to be able to deploy Hubble for Christmas as a working telescope, because it hadn\u2019t been working before,\u201d Grunsfeld told Spaceflight Now in an interview last year.<\/p>\n

But he took a moment to soak in the experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just seemed so fantastic that, for a moment, I felt like I had to pinch myself to make sure it was true, but I couldn\u2019t,\u201d Grunsfeld said. \u201cI just reached out with my arm and my index finger and touched the Hubble, kind of symbolically doing a, \u2018This is too good to be true\u2019 moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

After his last expedition to the orbiting observatory in 2009, Grunsfeld retired from NASA to become deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is in charge of Hubble\u2019s science operations.<\/p>\n

He returned to NASA in 2012 to take the helm of the agency\u2019s science mission directorate with an annual budget of more than $5 billion.<\/p>\n

During Grunsfeld\u2019s tenure as science chief, NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover landed on Mars and the New Horizons probe explored Pluto, and the space agency launched a series of Earth observation satellites such as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, the Global Precipitation Measurement spacecraft, and the Deep Space Climate Observatory.<\/p>\n

Geoff Yoder, the deputy head of the science mission directorate, will take Grunsfeld\u2019s position until a successor is named, NASA said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter exploring strange new worlds and seeking out new life in the universe, I can now boldly go where I\u2019ve rarely gone before \u2013 home,\u201d Grunsfeld said in a statement Tuesday. \u201cI\u2019m grateful to have had this extraordinary opportunity to lead NASA science, and know that the agency is well-positioned to make the next giant leaps in exploration and discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Grunsfeld is seen inside the shuttle Atlantis\u2019 airlock preparing for a spacewalk during a 2009 visit to the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA Veteran astronaut John Grunsfeld, who flew five space shuttle missions before becoming the head of NASA\u2019s science mission directorate in 2012, announced Tuesday he will leave the space agency April 30. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1668,898,3766,190],"class_list":["post-15614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-astronauts","tag-hubble-space-telescope","tag-john-grunsfeld","tag-nasa"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15614"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}