NASA Associate Administrator Chris Scolese is now the NASA acting administrator, with the resignation this week of NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, who is departing from his post automatically with the arrival of a new occupant at the White House.

Griffin is stepping down from leading the largest space agency in the world amidst widespread praise for his performance in office. (Please see Space & Missile Defense Report, Monday, Jan. 12, 2009.)

A leading contender for a permanent successor to Griffin is retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Jonathan Scott Gration, according to news reports.

Griffin, speaking before the Space Foundation in Washington, D.C., said he would like to have been asked to remain in his post, adding that "it would be an honor to be asked."

But with Barack Obama becoming president, it became clear the new White House occupant would choose to name a new agency head.

As reported previously, other names in contention include NASA science leader Charles Kennel and former astronaut Charles Bolden, a retired Marine Corps major general.

Unlike them, Gration has little NASA background, but Gration has a long relationship with Obama. Gration traveled with him in Africa in 2006, and spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

In 1982 and 1983, Gration served as a White House fellow and special assistant to the NASA deputy administrator.

Gration grew up in Africa, and was in the Air Force ROTC program at Rutgers University.

His military decorations include the legion of merit with oak leaf cluster, a bronze star, and a purple heart. His military record includes more than 5,000 flight hours as a command pilot, including more than 2,000 hours as an instructor pilot.

Gration flew missions in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and his aerial combat experience includes 274 combat missions over Iraq in 983 hours of combat time.

His career has included service as a White House fellow.

His educational background includes a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering that he received in 1974 at Rutgers, and a master of arts degree in national security studies that he received in 1988 at Georgetown University. He also attended the Armed Forces Staff College at Norfolk, Va., the National War College at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington, D.C., the Executive Program for General Officers of the Russian Federation and the United States at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and the national security decision making seminar at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University.

Whether Obama finally chooses Gration, Kennel, Bolden or some other person to lead NASA, it is clear the next administrator will have large shoes to fill.

Griffin in four years guided NASA through the return to flight after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, a struggle made much more difficult because he wasn’t given the funds to do it. Rather, he had to take money from other programs, including some in the science area, to pay for myriad safety improvements that have made it far less likely that astronauts will perish in another shuttle accident.

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee panel that oversees NASA, is attempting to obtain an extra $1 billion to partially reimburse those programs.

Also, with Griffin’s support, she succeeded in funding a shuttle flight that will service and refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope, a mission that will take off in May.

He also has overseen a huge advance in construction of the International Space Station.

On Griffin’s watch, the space agency has had many moments of glory, especially in robotic missions to Mars that have included stellar geological expeditions by rovers that lasted multiple times their expected design lives, and confirmation of huge amounts of frozen water on Mars. That last development is immensely significant, since water is critical to human habitation of Mars: water and its H2O components can provide astronauts with air to breathe, water to drink and for irrigating crops to get food to eat, plus hydrogen fuel to generate electricity, heat homes and offices, and power vehicles.

Perhaps more than anything, however, Griffin championed a raising of sights for the space agency, looking beyond mere low Earth orbit (LEO) missions to the space station, outward to challenging missions to the moon, Mars, asteroids and more.

LEO missions are fine, but NASA isn’t pioneering until it pushes out the final frontier and moves away from the home planet, Griffin said.

Hen also helped to design the next-generation spaceship system, Orion-Ares, that will permit astronauts to reach those far-flung destinations in the solar system.

One reason Obama didn’t retain Griffin may be that the NASA leader recoiled when an Obama aide asked him how much might be saved by scaling back the Ares rocket, instead using a military rocket type that at best would be able to reach low Earth orbit, and wouldn’t be able to reach the moon or beyond.

But Griffin always has been a blunt-spoken man of goals gained, rather than being a smooth-talking diplomat or office politician.