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As the Endeavour shuttle headed into orbit and a new NASA administrator was being approved, the most recent chief of the U.S. space program offered his thoughts on his term in office.
Michael D. Griffin, 59, served as the eleventh administrator of NASA from April 2005 to January 2009. He was brought in to oversee the space agency in the wake of the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster to restore public confidence in the space effort and to begin planning for the next generation of American space exploration projects. His accomplishments at NASA include: restoration of the space shuttle program, renewal of work on the International Space Station, repair of the Hubble Space Telescope, and increasing the agency's emphasis on earth sciences. He resigned in January this year to enable the new presidential administration to name its own candidate.
Griffin has since accepted a position as a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, where he will serve as the school's first Eminent Scholar in Engineering, interacting with the city's burgeoning high-tech community.
He granted us an interview on 15 July from his new home in Huntsville, where he was watching the latest shuttle launch, as well as coverage of the Senate's approval of his successor, Charles Bolden. We started with an even more historic NASA moment, though.
Spectrum: This is the week Apollo 11 took off on its voyage forty years ago. Where were you on 20 July 1969, and did the moon landing influence your career decisions as a young man?
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