President Barack Obama has met with a leading candidate to head NASA.
White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said Tuesday that Obama met with Charles Bolden, a former shuttle commander and retired Marine major general.
The administration isn’t expected to announce a new NASA chief immediately.
The 62-year-old Bolden left NASA in 1994 after flying in space four times, twice as shuttle commander, and serving as assistant deputy administrator at NASA headquarters in Washington.
If the Houston resident were nominated and won Senate confirmation, he would become the space agency’s first black administrator and second astronaut in the post.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.