Gen. Charlie Bolden Awarded 2019 National Air and Space Museum Trophy
Description:
Gen. Charlie Bolden was awarded the 2019 National Air and Space Museum Trophy for Lifetime Achievement. Bolden received the Trophy for his lifetime of pioneering achievements in both aviation and spaceflight. He has served as a Marine combat aviator in Southeast Asia, a test pilot at the Naval Test Center in Maryland, a NASA pilot astronaut who flew four space shuttle missions, a Marine Corps general in command positions and a NASA Administrator. Bolden grew up in segregated South Carolina and was one of four black midshipmen in the 1968 class at the U.S. Naval Academy. After serving as a combat and test pilot in the Marine Corps, he was selected as an astronaut candidate in 1980. He flew four space flights and logged over 680 hours in space, serving as pilot and then mission commander. On STS-31, he and the crew deployed the Hubble Space Telescope. He commanded the first joint American/Russian space shuttle mission on his last mission. After leaving NASA, he returned to active duty with the Marine Corps for nine years. He was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2006 and was appointed by President Barak Obama as the 12th administrator of NASA. As administrator he oversaw the transition from the space shuttle program to an era of ISS utilization and development of new vehicles for human spaceflight beyond Earth orbit. The agency’s science activities under his leadership included the landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars, the launch of the Juno spacecraft to Jupiter and continued progress toward the 2018 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.
Video Duration:
5 min 4 sec
YouTube Keywords:
aviation air space national museum smithsonian airplane NASA Rocket Jet Discovery SR-71 Blackbird "Space Shuttle" History Science STEM astronaut
