NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden says it’s the “beginning of a new era” for NASA, now that the Shuttle program has ended and the massive craft are making their ways to museums. But nonetheless, he was “very emotional” watching Space Shuttle Discovery make its last flight yesterday to its permanent home at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center.
Bolden had “good times in Discovery” when he piloted two of its 39 missions — one that put the Hubble Space Telescope in order and the other the first with a crew that included a Russian cosmonaut.
NASA’s been in the business of “taking science fiction and turning it into science fact” for over 60 years, and Bolden says that’s going to continue.
The next destination? Mars. Bolden is confident “we’re going to go farther than the moon,” in the pursuit of putting humans “in the Martian environment by 2030.”